


a dark world aches (for a splash of the sun)

by heartunsettledsoul



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Bisexual Veronica Lodge, Core 4 POV, Mentions of alcoholism, Rating bump, accidental gossip girl vibes, aka FP Jones is a shitty dad none of us are surprised, bughead friendly, bughead slowburn, but similar vibes, canon typical self harm, idiots to lovers, mentions of parental neglect, not exactly the same plot as the books, oh god you annoy me but you're hot, one of us is lying au, one of us is next au, varchie fastburn, varchie friendly, well. sort of., ya murder au of a ya murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 61,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: “She wants to do an investigative piece on Sweetwater Secrets.”“What, like figure out who runs it?” That seems above and beyond, even for people like Jughead and Betty whose default settings are to be completely absurd, though in different executions. “That’s insane.”“Yes, Arch, like figure out who runs it.” He’s at a stop sign and whips his head, checking to see if Jug looks as serious as he sounds. He does. “People deserve to know who is doing this to them.”or, a quasione of us is lying&one of us is nextau
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 171
Kudos: 133
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	1. jughead, 6:32am

**Author's Note:**

> for loveleee, who as she read _one of us is lying_ at my recommendation, asked: are we only into this because nate is basically jughead? 
> 
> if you know the plot of the book(s), this has ...strayed. but the heart of it is still there. I think. (I hope.) 
> 
> a huge thank you to iconicponytail, jugandbettsdetectiveagency, and sandraven for the encouraging me and acting as sounding boards. plots are hard. 
> 
> title and epigraphs from cough syrup by young the giant.

_Life's too short to even care at all oh  
_ _I'm losing my mind losing my mind losing control  
_ _These fishes in the sea they're staring at me  
_ _A wet world aches for a beat of a drum_

* * *

Jughead Jones isn’t used to people listening to him; he is, steadfastly, _that guy_ in class and most people tune him out. He prides himself on his cynicism and anarchistic moods but he is self-aware enough to acknowledge that most people find him off-putting. 

There is a reason, after all, that the faculty advisor to the debate team told him after two practices freshman year that debate requires allowing the opposing side to speak and that perhaps he should consider another extracurricular. 

Nobody listens to him in class, so why should Jughead have expected anybody to listen to what he ranted about in a school newspaper editorial—let alone follow through on his long-winded advice? 

His morning is not the cliched coming-of-age film montage where the awkward kid walks in the doors and everyone is suddenly high-fiving him and clapping him on the shoulder. It may as well be. Moose Mason _does_ clap him on the shoulder with a murmured, “Thanks, man” and there is far more eye contact from the lifelong-classmates-and-passing-acquaintances than Jughead ever wants to repeat. 

Did somebody stitch _point at me_ on his beanie? Has Reggie started another rumor about him researching how to build a bomb on school computers? (That had been a fun one to fight the middle school principal about; somehow only Jughead ended up with detention.) 

These reactions are much more positive than any of the possibilities flitting through his brain could merit. 

The attention has his shoulders inching up toward his ears by the time he spins his locker combination, and he wonders about two seconds too late if something is about to explode on him. Nothing slaps him in the face, just the same old crumpled notebooks and outdated textbooks piled on top of each other. He extracts the calculus book and slams the door shut, only to jump at the sudden appearance of Betty Cooper behind it. 

Jughead blinks. “Betty. Hi.” 

It is not necessarily a surprise to have Betty corner him this early in the morning, being that they are technically co-editors-in-chief of the school paper. She doesn’t look quite like a woman on a mission as she might be if she is here on official business; not a hair is out of place in her ponytail, her pristine notebooks are neatly stacked in her arms, and she wears a prim cardigan that matches the blue scrunchie holding her hair up, but her eyes are nervous and she chews on her bottom lip as though it’s a dam keeping a wave of words at bay.

Color him intrigued. 

As she opens her mouth to speak, the bell rings and Jughead watches her snap back to attention, not wanting to be even a second late to first period. “Can we talk at lunch?” 

Betty is gone as quickly as she appeared. People continue to nod appreciatively at him. Archie eventually sidles up to him, chomping on a chocolate chip muffin the size of his face, hair damp from a post-morning-practice shower. Idly, Jughead finds himself annoyed Archie didn’t bring him one of the cafeteria muffins. “Jug,” Archie mumbles through crumbs. “The whole team was talking about your article in the locker room before practice.” 

If there is anything Jughead wants to hear _less_ than that he was a topic of conversation for the football team in the locker room, he can’t think of it. He raises his eyebrows, showing his skepticism to Archie. 

“No, really, they’re all pretty happy someone finally said it.” 

Said _what,_ Jughead wonders. He doesn’t think he had queued anything for the paper’s site over the weekend; he is pretty certain, actually, because this coming week is Betty’s print version and their agreement is that the web content is arts-only on her weeks. Still, he pulls his phone from his back jeans pocket and opens a browser window, tapping on the bookmarked _Blue & Gold _homepage. 

_Big Brother Shouldn’t Care About Your Sexcapades, and Neither Should We_

“Oh,” he says dumbly. 

Right, _that_ was not scheduled to post last night. That was supposed to be saved as a draft in the admin settings. 

Archie had been the one to convince him to write the article, which Jughead attributes only to the fact that he was sick of hearing him wax poetic about the world going to hell in a digital hand basket. 

An ironic stance to take, considering that the article Jughead writes is published online. And that it goes about as viral as anything could on a small-town high school paper’s online-only news outlet.

_Mainly_ online, he should say, lest Betty, pioneer of the dead art of print journalism, overhear and threaten to take away his position as managing editor of web content. She probably wouldn’t, but the girl is scary with a red pen—physical or digital. Hence why the _Blue & Gold _functions essentially as two papers: Jughead manages the short-form web version, and Betty the long-form print. They have not quite hammered out the protocol for when something will be published in both; Jughead thinks Betty has been putting off that conversation as much as he has. 

“Jug,” Archie had sighed. “If you hate it that much, write one of your opinion blogs—”

“Editorial,” he clarified, but was waved off. 

“Betty’s given you artistic license this year anyway, right?” 

She had; likely to avoid another argument-laden year. Junior year had Betty practically at the helm as editor-at-large to Adam Chisolm, who oversaw the publication as one unit. As editor-at-large of the web content, Jughead needed to discuss things with Adam a lot; Adam, a golden boy in his own right, wanted nothing to do with Jughead’s caustic thoughts and subsequently passed him off to Betty. Their conversations were often not... polite. _Do whatever you want, Jughead,_ Betty said when they received their appointed positions the previous spring, _but you answer to Weatherbee on anything that we don’t cross-publish._

Archie’s advice comes to fruition in the insomnia-fueled editorial that Jughead writes to condemn the school’s anonymous gossip app, Sweetwater Secrets, for being trite, a waste of everybody’s time and phone storage, and an _outdated homage to an overwrought, poorly-written teen soap from the aughts._

Jughead has no skin in the game, but he’s seen enough evenings behind the projector at the Bijou where the whole theater empties out after an app ping goes off—like vultures to roadkill— to be fully over the app’s claim on their collective subconscious. The Riverdale High administration turns a blind eye until they legally cannot: Mr. Phillips’ accusation of drug peddling wound up being weed only versus the coke accusation, but Ms. Grundy, a single mom in her late 30s, was essentially run out of town, despite the statutory rape rumor being thoroughly investigated and disproven. 

For the most part, though, Weatherbee politely ignores the buzzing phones that lead to students fleeing class both in anger and in tears. 

Jughead doesn’t lead a life anywhere _near_ interesting enough to end up with his name on a push notification. He also wears his brain on his sleeve—people actively avoid him, and nobody would want to receive any kind of great revelations about him. Archie is a genuinely good guy, though a bit oblivious, and often ends up on the receiving end of commentary about his serial dating. Sweetwater Secrets has taken to embellishing what he gets up to, painting him every bit the douchebag quarterback that his predecessor was, but he is not. And Jughead feels protective. 

Jason Blossom deserved all the mud slung at him. Jughead was more than happy to see him taken down a peg by the app exposing that he cheated on his longtime girlfriend, but doing so by outing Polly Cooper as the girl in question with an accompanying Planned Parenthood waiting room photo was scummy as fuck. Polly dropped out to finish her GED at home and Betty became the mark to absorb all the terrible misogynist commentary on her behalf. 

The app is fucking toxic and, yeah, maybe he felt more impassioned about that after catching Betty crying in the newspaper office in the spring, but it still needs to be said. 

So when the app returned to school alongside them all for senior year, back with a vengeance by leaking private, in-flagrante photos of Midge Klump and Moose Mason, Jughead’s patience officially ran out. Moose may be a bit of an asshole in the way most teenage football players are, but Jughead and Midge have always been friendly since their freshman year lab partner assignment and it was just such _bullshit._

“Bullshit,” Jughead had sworn, kicking forcefully at the punching bag hanging in Archie’s room. It’s barely reachable from his position hanging off the foot of the bed, so the kick turns out to be a half-hearted nudge, but the effort feels poignant. 

“Write it down,” Archie told him, before stabbing a few buttons on his calculator. “They only have the power because everybody walks around with their nose glued to the app. Do your thing and convince people to delete it. Or shut up and actually help me on calc, man. You’re a useless tutor when you’re pissed off.”

Maybe this _is_ the stupid movie montage: everything screeching to a halt and _bet you’re wondering how I wound up here._

_Well apparently I was too exhausted at 3am on Sunday when I stayed up writing a rant that was never meant to see the light of day and hit the wrong button._

_This is my nightmare._

The day is weird, to put it mildly. 

Weirder still is Betty seeking him out again at lunch, true to her word. It clicks as she drags him by the elbow into the _Blue & Gold_ office that he is about to be scolded—for not warning her, for scooping a potential long-form article, for being a pain in her ass, for having two typos, for using ‘sexcapades’ in a headline. 

(Blame that one on the 1am writing. Jughead could reach back to his night owl self and smack him for such a dumbass word choice.) 

He braces, already formulating his response that she isn’t actually his boss and that each have editorial rights—nevermind that he _hadn’t meant to publish it_. 

The expression from this morning is back, lip chewing and apprehension and all. 

Jughead is overcome with the inexplicable urge to reach forward and gently relieve it of its abuse. 

It dawns on him the longer that he stares at her lips that the reason something looks off about her is that she isn’t wearing lipstick, or any makeup at all for that matter. He hadn’t known that he clocked her beauty habits. 

What the _fuck_ is this day. 

“Thank you, Jughead.” 

Again: _what the fuck._

“For what?” 

She scoffs and the familiar tightass editor he knows peeks out from beneath the surface. “Jughead, what is anybody talking about today? For your article. Thank you for writing it, for finally saying something that should have been said ages ago.” The smile she gives him is softer than he is used to seeing in the halls or in newspaper meetings, something more real than what everybody else seems to get. 

The image of her sobbing form in the shadows of this very office four months ago is crystal clear in his mind’s eye. He’d had that same, odd impulse to comfort her in then as well. Instead he had backed out of the doorway and gently closed it, leaving her to her emotions. 

“You’re welcome, I guess?” 

“You used the passive voice twice and misspelled degradation, by the way.” 

There she is. 

“I know.” He’s sheepish now, unwilling to admit it was an unedited accident now that she is so appreciative of the fluke. He stares at his toes for a moment and rubs at the back of his neck. Mouth open to make his confession, Betty cuts him off. 

“I know I’m kind of a pain in your ass,” she says wryly. Jughead wants to take a crack at _kind of_ but holds back. “I know that we only ever see each other because of Archie or the paper, and that I really am a huge pain in your ass about the paper.” 

She’s self-aware at least. 

“You didn’t need to be so nice to me in the spring, with—with everything that happened. It never felt like you were avoiding the subject or walking on eggshells like Archie did. You treated me normally. That meant a lot. I’ve been wanting to tear that stupid fucking app and whoever is behind it apart all summer and I think we could figure that out together.” 

Jughead almost drops his jaw in surprise; who knew Betty Cooper swore, let alone said _fuck,_ and in such a vicious way. It provides an interesting shift in perspective.

Something about the way she asks, the way she looks as she’s asking—calm and poised, but with a fire burning in her eyes and voice that tells him she’s one popped stitch away from bursting—has him agreeing before even the thought of saying yes is fully formed. 

Anything to get more of this side of her, to get that smile again. 

When he’s done listing his caveats—“That doesn’t sound like complete freedom, come on”—Betty is positively beaming at him. 

* * *

When he looks for Jug after school to offer him a ride home, Archie is surprised to find him with Betty in the newspaper office. It's not a staff meeting day, he knows. Were they friendly now? They didn’t seem to be sniping at each other like usual, like they do when they’re all together at lunch or on his front porch. It jostles something out of place in his mind, though he’s not sure what. 

“Hey guys, what’s up?” he calls from the doorway, unclear if he is interrupting things. Betty smiles and beckons him in, Jug looks like a deer in headlights. “Jug I’m heading home if you still want me to drop you off back at…” he trails off, knowing that Jughead is fiercely private about his home life, inclusive of living at Sunnyside. Archie also knows Jughead doesn’t really like to call it _home_ so they both just use _Sunnyside_ to avoid it. But he assumes Betty doesn’t know. 

Jughead looks both thankful and startled. “I didn't realize what time it was.”

Betty seems surprised too. “Me neither. If you want to keep working, Jug, I have my mom’s car this week and I can take you home.” 

Archie catches the flinch and watches Jughead’s excuse come out smooth, before he rushes a goodbye to Betty and strides out the door. Archie plays dumb and shrugs to her, never one to have an explanation for Jug’s actions, let alone speak for him, and follows him out. 

He has to wonder though, seeing the tips of his best friend’s ears go red, if Jughead is embarrassed about his personal life or about being caught spending time with Betty. 

“You guys seemed to be getting along okay back there,” Archie observes, once they’re in his—Fred’s—truck. 

No flinching this time, but a tick of his jaw gives him away. Jug likes to think he’s mysterious and aloof; excluding Archie, he is. “She wants to do an investigative piece on Sweetwater Secrets.” 

“What, like figure out who runs it?” That seems above and beyond, even for people like Jughead and Betty whose default settings are to be completely absurd, though in different executions. “That’s insane.”

“Yes, Arch, like figure out who runs it.” He’s at a stop sign and whips his head, checking to see if Jug looks as serious as he sounds. He does. “People deserve to know who is doing this to them.” 

Archie thinks back to the spring: hearing the Coopers screaming at each other through his open bedroom windows, seeing Betty and Polly crying in their respective bedrooms, pushing back on every douchebag who tried to single out Betty for their cruelty once Polly left school. 

Jughead may have a point. 

Still, it feels like a terrible idea, and Archie tells him as much. “Don’t you think that’s like poking the bear? A bear you’ve already poked pretty hard?” 

Jughead scoffs. “Arch, I know I’m weird and that everybody thinks I’m weirder than I am, but you and I both know I am far less entertaining then they want me to be. What are they going to do, out me as a member of Dilton’s Gryphons & Gargoyle team? Come on, nobody gives two shits about me, let alone cares deeply enough to dig up nonexistent dirt on me.” 

Again, Jughead makes a solid point. Still, though, it makes Archie nervous to think that yet another person he cares about could now have a target on their back. 

After dinner, which consisted of him and Jughead demolishing all of the spaghetti and meatballs Fred threw together once seeing Jughead walk in the door, then dropping Jughead off at Sunnyside for the night, Archie dumps the contents of his football bag on the laundry room floor. The bag smells, that is an occupational hazard, but Archie takes hygiene seriously—a leftover habit from his mom’s nervous habit of cleaning, which ratcheted up to a solid 12 out of 10 pre-divorce—and refuses to let his practice uniform and gym clothes sit in their own filth. 

He first fills the sink with hot water and a scoop of extra strength pre-wash, then goes through each and every item in the bag before it gets tossed in the sink. 

It’s game week. It may only be Monday, with the game not until Friday, but the week prior his spirit gifts started showing up on Tuesday. He might be too expectant, he knows, though—

“Yes,” he cheers, mostly under his breath. A box of his favorite protein bars, wrapped in a sloppy string bow and signed in marker with an _xox V._

Archie only known Veronica Lodge peripherally before this year; she transferred to Riverdale at the start of junior year, fast friends with Betty after running into her in the front office on the first day and fast frenemies with Cheryl Blossom after joining the River Vixens. It would be hard _not_ to notice her, with the distinct former-socialite wardrobe and the trademark pearls and the waterfall of dark hair that dances over her shoulders, but Archie barely saw Betty or Jug last year, let alone dated anybody. 

(A refreshing break from sophomore year, when he had been the subject of many a Sweetwater Secret ping, but only in that they tallied how many dates he went on. Was it _his_ fault that he filled out late and the entire Vixens squad and field hockey team kept asking him out?)

Junior year was an important season for college scouting and he had been practicing guitar until his fingers bled in order for Josie McCoy to let him moonlight in her band after Valerie fractured her elbow. Then came a summer of training camps and working weekends at his dad’s constructions sites. The most Archie saw of Veronica Lodge the previous year had been in the halls or when she came over to Betty’s. 

Come the first week of senior preseason, though, Veronica had been waiting for him by the door to the boys’ locker room with not one smudge of her dark lipstick or single hair out of place despite mat burns and bruises on her legs from tumbling practice all morning. 

“So I’m your _senior spirit Vixen,_ ” she had scoffed, air quotes painfully obvious. “It seems Trula and Cheryl schemed last year to get me out of it, so I would be stuck doing it my senior year.” Archie had to admit, that was a brilliant and vindictive move against her. 

All the football seniors were ‘assigned’ a partner Vixen, usually freshmen or other newcomers, to essentially be gofers for them. It was the most hazing either team managed to get away with and while it was mostly harmless, there would be the occasional bad apple senior who treated his partner like dirt. Archie hadn’t felt confident enough until junior year to say something, telling off Jason Blossom for being a dick to the brand new sophomore. It earned him both a black eye and good favor with the coach; he’s not entirely unconvinced it is part of why he is captain this year. He’d lectured the guys on this very subject this morning, to majority agreement. Only Reggie and Bret had put up complaint. 

Somehow he did not think Veronica would appreciate that fact, either way. 

She leveled him with a look. “Let me make one thing abundantly clear: the only reason I am not smacking Trula six ways to Sunday is because I like my spot on the top of the pyramid. I do not bake and I do not fluff male egos.” Archie nodded, mostly too nervous to say anything. “But I do have access to my father’s black card, so I can buy you new equipment or fly in Magnolia cupcakes, or whatever.” 

Then, Archie huffed a laugh. “I don’t need fancy cupcakes, Veronica. Store bought is fine. I like cookies better anyway. Maybe just some protein bars? Doritos? I’m easy.” He hadn’t noticed the innuendo until she arched an eyebrow and gave him an appraising look, slowly dragging her eyes over him from head to toe. He knew how brightly he must have flushed. 

On the last day of pre-season, he came back to his gym locker after practice to a beautiful new gym bag in Bulldog colors, monogrammed with his name, number, and captain status. Inside, it had been stuffed with his favorite protein bars, the brand of calf-highs he preferred, and a ton of other snacks and small gear. Including the piece de resistance: a carton of grocery store chocolate cookies decorated with a stick-on bow, and the label scratched out in marker and replaced with _lovingly homemade._

If he hadn’t had a growing crush on Veronica from across the football field all week, that had solidified it. Now he spends half his time reading back through their text conversations, deciphering whether she may feel similarly enough for him to take the plunge and ask her out. Her personality is flirtatious by default—she’s this way with Betty, with the waiters at Pop’s—and Archie is dying to figure Veronica out. 

**_Found my prize,_ ** he texts her. 

In a flash: three flexing arm emojis and **_Gotta be nice and strong for Friday, Archiekins,_ **signed with a red heart. 

Archie thinks about that red heart all the way until he falls asleep. He _dreams_ about that red heart, in a string of less-appropriate emojis that dream-Veronica texts him before they meet up under the bleachers after Friday’s game, her hands twisting in his hair and his own dream-hands inching up up _up_ under that pleated skirt and then—

He still thinks of that heart as he grumbles at his alarm, ready to ride the high of that dream all the way into a warm shower that might run a little long. 

Ice water may as well be dumped over him as Archie scrolls his notifications, seeing Sweetwater Secrets prominent on his screen—Jughead’s name even more prominent in its text. 

* * *

Veronica’s plans for Tuesday had consisted solely of acing her French exam and forcing Betty to gameplan how to convince her other (redheaded) best friend to man up and ask her out. Veronica Lodge believes in equity and has asked out her fair share of boys, but something about Archie Andrews makes her want to make him work for it. And she’s not even making him _work that hard._

**_The boy is dense, B, how can you stand it_** _,_ she complains Monday night. 

An unhelpful response from her unusually distracted BFF reads: **_lol, why do you think I fell out of ‘love’ with him in the 5th grade? You know he’s a sweetheart but you really need to lead the horse to water with this_ **

**_I’d certainly like to *ride* that horse to water_ **

**_Aaaaand goodnight, V_ **

But the moment Veronica wakes up to see a Sweetwater Secrets notification on her phone, she knows Betty will be impossible to derail today; the girl can be aggressively single-minded when her heart is set on something and after Jones posted that editorial, Betty is _set._

She knows the answer before even pressing send on the text asking Betty if she wants a latte and a ride to school: a _yes please_ to the latte, but she is already at school working in the paper office with ‘Jug’. 

Classic, Veronica scoffs. Scoffs _lovingly,_ of course. Far be it from her to judge her best friend’s Lois Lane whims, even if Jones’s too-long hair and worn-out beanie leave him very far from Clark Kent. 

That said, Veronica knows what it’s like to have a gossip target on her back—a lifetime at Manhattan prep schools and two years at Spence will do that to a girl—and thus softens slightly to Archie’s other (weird) best friend. She takes an easy stab in the dark that he drinks his coffee black and turns up in the _Blue & Gold _office about 15 minutes before the first bell to deliver sustenance to the journalist duo. 

“Bettykins. Jones,” Veronica greets. 

He rolls his eyes. “Lodge.” 

Jughead looks wary of the breakfast offering but still accepts the large coffee and two bear claws. He also looks remarkably calm for someone at the mercy of an anonymous gossip monolith; Betty, however, looks frazzled and practically drains half the latte in one gulp. 

“Take it easy, Betts,” he cautions. Veronica clocks the endearment with interest, and the light pink spots on Betty’s cheeks even more so. 

Betty’s murmured answer— _you know I can’t, Jug_ —feels too intimate for her to overhear. Veronica spins on her heels to look at the chalkboard, where they have written out the text of the morning’s callout ping. 

**Don’t think you all can escape our loving grasps just by moving us to your outdated phone’s trash bin. Let’s kick it up a notch now. We’ll give you the chance to save yourself from your fate, do what we ask to keep your secrets, or pay the price. You get 24 hours to pick your path. We’ll even get thematic, in honor of our favorite stats-killing weirdo: Truth or Quest, Jughead Jones?**

“What’s the quest part mean?” she asks. “Shouldn’t it just be truth or dare?” 

“It’s from Gryphons & Gargoyles.” Betty continues at Veronica’s confused silence, “It’s a tabletop role-playing game.” 

Veronica purses her lips, still unclear but also knowing that future explanation will lead to the need to suppress laughter. 

Jughead cuts in. “Yes, yes, you can laugh. It is exactly as weird and nerdy as it sounds. I play with Dilton and a bunch of other low-tier people. My role is the Hellcaster, please carry on with your mockery.” 

She lets out an undignified snort. _Hellcaster, good grief._

“Quests,” Betty begins, talking over Veronica’s giggling, “are essentially game challenges. It’s like the Monopoly chance cards, but far more involved. So, yes, it’s a game of truth or dare. Based on the verbiage, we think that in 24 hours if Jughead hasn’t answered with his choice, they default to revealing the truth as they usually do. We don’t know how high stakes they might go with picking quest. Would it be fraternity-style hazing like streaking around the football field during a game? Or something bordering illegality?” 

Streaking is an interesting first thought for Betty to have, since the streaker in question would be the lanky boy standing next to her and hanging on her every word. 

“What’s your pick, then, Jones?” Veronica is curious; both of what this damn app might make him do and what secrets he may be hiding. 

“Playing chicken.” 

“Come again?” 

“I’m not going to respond,” he says. “I’m not about to open myself up to whatever they have up their sleeve for a first quest. I’ll keep my dignity, thank you very much.” 

Veronica bites back a comment about _what dignity._ “You’re not worried about what they’d use for truth?” Her heart softens again, wondering if Jughead’s hardened exterior might be akin to her own, hiding a fleshy, delicate underbelly. The few times she was the subject of a Sweetwater ping, it was recycled stories of her dramatic Pence days. That didn’t make it feel any less awful to rehash old wounds. 

Jughead rolls his eyes. “What’s the weirdest rumor you’ve heard about me, Lodge?” 

That one’s easy: “Your hat is either hiding a bald spot or a Voldemort-type face because you made a pact with the devil.” 

A small huff of laughter comes from Betty’s direction. Jughead tugs off the beanie that may as well be surgically attached to his head and spins around, arms wide in show. “Just hair, sorry to disappoint.” 

“And?” Veronica presses. “What’s your point?” 

“I’m boring, Veronica. It’s all bullshit cracks leftover from middle school. I don’t have a big, dark, life-ruining secret that nobody knows about. I’ll be fine.” 

She admires the gall, she has to admit. But the _big, dark, life-ruining secret_ hits a chord deep in her belly, wondering if she might need to worry about being called out after all. 

Veronica is pretty sure she’ll have an A on the French test by the time she leaves the classroom, which she does right after she turns in the test. There were glares following her out but she knows Madame Burble won’t give detention to her star student. 

The preferred outdoor lunch table is available; it goes to seniors by default but with an unclear popularity hierarchy among their graduating class, the best table is up for grabs to whomever gets to lunch first. 

The bento box that Manuela prepared for her that morning is perfectly chilled and Veronica swipes her celery through a hefty dollop of hummus before crunching on it. The sensation is uniquely satisfying, a dotted ‘i’ to her good morning. The bell hasn’t rung so Veronica doesn’t text Betty just yet to ask if she will be joining her or hiding away in her investigative spiral. 

The French exam success does call for celebration, though, in the form of treating herself to froyo from the cafeteria. Maybe she could tempt Betty by tempting _Jones_ —she has seen the boy and Archie put away disgusting amounts of food at Pop’s and there’s no way he would turn down free dessert. And with Betty and Jughead will come Archie, naturally, which is the perfect opportunity for flirting. 

What she _should_ have done is used her time to sneak today’s game week surprise into Archie’s locker; a fancy shaker bottle, in Bulldogs colors, and the strawberry protein powder he prefers. 

Cruel fate that Cheryl was fucking with her from beyond the graduation stage, but how lucky is she to have been handed such a fortuitous surprise on a beautifully-sculpted, redheaded platter. Veronica had admired Archie from afar the year prior, grilling Betty on his romantic past after hearing tell of his Sweetwater callouts because surely someone Betty considers a best friend—not the _only_ best friend now that she had stepped into town—would not be such a lothario. 

Betty assured her of his sweet, if a bit nearsighted, nature but that he was doggedin his pursuit of a football scholarship and a spot in a famous local band. Veronica can appreciate a man who is committed. But she has bided her time to respect his care for his future and is now in full wooing mode. 

Veronica woos by way of abusing her credit card limit and her love language is gifts. 

After that last day of pre-season, when she had left his first gift in the locker room, Veronica waited outside for him again—not to talk to him this time, but to see if the care package had been well-received. He had emerged, freshly showered and looking unfairly good in his damp Riverdale High Athletics tshirt, grinning like a kid in a candy store and digging through the customized Under Armour gym bag; as well he should have, because Veronica had essentially given him a bag-sized candy store. 

Seeing him so happy from something _she_ had done gave Veronica a warm feeling in the way that no other gift-giving had accomplished: like the way that first sip of cocoa on a cold day heats up from the warmth on your lips, down to your chest and lungs, and all the way to your toes. 

His **_thank you!!!_ ** text brought that feeling back, as did every subsequent message they exchanged. Veronica has amped up her flirty texting to something that would have gotten her called names back at Spence. 

_Slut. Thirsty. Pathetic._

Here, though? Archie matches her flirt for flirt and doesn’t turn around and tell all the catty popular girls—the ones supposed to be her friends—what she’s saying in order to date one of them instead. 

But where there are wink emojis and wordplay over text, they have hardly spent more than a few passing moments together, between their respective sports and classes and lives.

Ever the surprise, though, Archie shows up in the courtyard with his lunch tray and beelines for her. 

“Hey, Ronnie,” he grins. _God_ , that crooked little smile kills her. The things she would do to get that smile all the time—particularly that smile with fewer layers of clothing between them. 

“Archiekins, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Veronica demures, suddenly shy despite all her brazen texts and thoughts. He’s pretty, yes, and she can just tell he’s a good kisser, but Veronica has slowly come to realize that she isn’t just attracted to Archie—she _likes_ him. She wants him to take her clothes off but also hopes he’ll invite her to music gigs, serenade her from the stage, and kiss her sweetly at the end of the night. 

Boys in Manhattan were exhausting and smug and always two seconds away from getting fresh or sweet-talking you into a casual line of coke. It may have been her life for a little while but after Papi’s business partner was indicted for embezzlement, things had to change—including the return to her parents’ hometown. 

“Just thought we could hang out outside of practices and texts.” Now he looks shy and she could melt. 

After a few moments of smiling stupidly at each other, Veronica switches focus back to her hummus, only to immediately be drawn to Betty’s approach. And just as predicted, Jughead trails behind her. 

Like a damn puppydog. 

Veronica knows how much Betty complains about Jughead’s caustic personality and monopolization of Archie’s time, but her girl changed her tune awfully quick. 

_Swoon._

“I’m okay without the froyo today, V, but thank you.” 

Jughead swings his limbs around with surprising deftness to slide in next to Archie. “Technically, though, you offered up two servings of froyo and I am taking Betty’s for myself.” 

“I’ll bet you are,” Veronica mutters under her breath. Both Archie and Jughead seem to hear her, each going a little red for separate reasons, but Betty is left unawares. Instead she follows up with a louder, “Be a good boy and eat your vegetables first, you heathen. Maybe Betty will decide she wants something sweet after all.” 

Jughead takes a pointed bite out of his—vegetable-free—cafeteria burger and narrows his eyes at her. 

“You doin’ okay, Jug?” Archie turns his full focus to Jughead, allowing Veronica to get a good look at Betty outside of the building’s fluorescents. 

“Are _you_ okay,” she asks of her friend. Those eye bags may be designer, but they are deep and blue—practically matching Jones’s, if she’s being honest—and Veronica knows Betty only just got her sleep back on track after a summer free of gossip apps and cruel teens. 

“I’ll be fine.” It’s as close to a snappy answer as Betty is capable of giving, so Veronica backs off. Across the table, Archie and Jughead seem to be conversing entirely in facial expressions. On Jones, it’s obnoxious, but on Archie… well, she loves an expressive face. 

“Actually, V,” Betty starts in, once the rest of their table has returned to their food. “Jug and I are compiling a timeline of all the app pings and the events they refer to, trying to pinpoint where attendees might overlap.” Smart, Veronica thinks, if not for the fact of this town being so small that everybody is at every event, ever. High school parties included. “But do you have any thoughts of a connection between your Spence circles and Riverdale?” 

“I’d have to do a little social media digging, but we’re not so far out of the city range that it would be impossible.” 

When she heard of Sweetwater Secrets, Veronica was surprised something so devious and cruel showed up first here of all places, when Spence and every other private high school was rife with catty girls with coding skills. 

On Betty’s phone screen, Veronica can see a running countdown clock. There’s about 18 hours left: the 24-hour mark since the ping this morning about Jughead. 

“Gruesome, B, Jesus.” 

Jughead glances over to the phone screen as well, nonchalant as can be, “My integrity _is_ on the line, you know.” Betty snaps up, eyes wild with concern. “Betty, I’m kidding. We’ve been over this.” 

Again, Veronica feels like she may be intruding on something. On the one hand, good for Betty; on the other—

“This is so dark,” she scoffs. “Can’t you go ruin the vibe in your stuffy office?” Whether she’s defusing the moment for the sake of their lunch, or to quell her own rising anxiety, Veronica cannot admit. 

The repartee is a welcome distraction, in any case, when Jughead pipes up. “But then how would we combat the darkness with your sunshiney personality, Lodge?” 

Both Archie and Betty are stifling laughter in her periphery so she cedes the point—but only to keep a smile on Betty’s face. 

Ginger is vicious in practice that afternoon and it doesn’t help that Veronica is already on edge from a final-bell notification: **_Tick-tock, tick-tock, Mr. Jones. 16 hours left to choose your fate._ **

The ball of lead in her stomach lightens when she exits the girls’ locker room to see Archie leaning against the wall, scrolling on his phone. He pops up with a grin upon seeing her. 

“Hey, Ronnie. Figured I could walk you to your car, since it’s getting dark out already.” 

_Oh this sweet idiot boy_ , Veronica swoons. 

When she nods, Archie flushes, and they exit the gym doors together in silence. Her car is parked no more than a few hundred yards away, and it has her teasing him. “You know, Archie, it’s only an app. I don’t think anybody is coming out from the shadows to get me.” 

And even should that happen, Veronica’s gymnastics skills extend beyond pyramids and tumbles, and into a mean roundhouse kick. 

Sheepish, Archie shrugs. “I know, but ...let me have this?” The earnestness in his expression, the boyish shyness in his voice, all of this makes her weak in the knees.

“You can have whatever you want, Archie,” she singsongs. _I dare you,_ she wants to say. _Have me. Take me. Do_ something _to me._

They reach her car and she doesn’t need to verbalize any of her pleas because his—very solid—body pushes against hers until the handle of her car door is right at her ass. With a warm hand on her waist, and those soft lips descending on hers, it hardly matters. 

* * *

It’s been days since Betty slept well so she almost convinces herself that the message from Sweetwater Secrets on Wednesday morning is a hallucination. At the very least, the sleep explanation explains her lack of decorum in calling Jughead the moment it registers as reality. 

She has to dig to find his number, her mind growing more frantic with each passing minute. They only communicate through school emails and she follows his very sparse instagram. Too early to call Archie for sure, Betty knows he rolls out of bed two minutes before he gets in the truck. 

It’s in the paper staff directory, she thinks. 

_Maybe? Please?_

It is.

The copy of the ping dances across her eyelids with every blink, every deep breath she tries to inhale while scrolling through the contact list. Why had she not sorted this alphabetically? Muggs, Doiley, Lopez, Sweett, so many goddamn freshman, and then— 

**Tsk, tsk, Forsythe Pendleton. We thought you were up to the challenge. Maybe you’re just not as smart as you’d like us to think you are. After all, someone who is The Third is destined to follow their namesake’s footsteps. Guess that leads you right into the snakepit as head of Southside Serpents and their filth. We’re sure Junior will hand over his crown eventually.**

“Wow, Betty Cooper still wants to pal around with a known gangbanger, huh? Color me shocked.” His voice is all bark, and some bite if she’s being honest, but Betty knows the visceral pain that comes from being cut to the quick by this damn app. She hadn’t lashed out in the spring, despite how much she wanted to. Betty’s anger went inward, resentment growing ever stronger and cuts on her palms constantly reopening. She understands, so she shoves aside the pinprick of hurt from his words.

“It's true, then?” she asks softly. 

“You know Sweetwater, the most accurate source of news in town.” 

Before Betty can even open her mouth to form some sort of—something, an apology, a vow to take down this asshole once and for all, Jughead cuts her off. 

“Don’t just give me the placating apology, Cooper. Your sugar and spice and everything nice approach doesn’t hold up against Southside filth.” He keeps ranting, the words losing some of the edge the longer that Betty waits for him to peter out, to realize it’s not her that he wants to be yelling at. 

“Are you done?” She’s patient as she asks, not wanting to be dismissive, but still cutting him off mid-sentence. 

“No.” 

“I am still going to say that I’m sorry, Jughead. I’m sorry because I know what you’re about to go through. Yeah, it’s two very different family secrets, but I’ve done this already. A lot of us have.” This seems to quiet him. Jughead had never wanted to _fit in_ , Betty knows, but even if he had… this was not the way for it to happen. Nobody wants to be part of this crowd. 

“I didn’t know,” he admits after a long pause. “I mean, I’m not dense, I knew he wasn’t the world’s most upstanding citizen and lord knows he is not a proud owner of a world’s best dad mug, but…” There’s a shaky inhale after Jughead trails off; if she didn’t know any better, she might think he’s begun to cry. His voice is clear when he eventually continues, in any case. “Figures that he’s responsible enough to lead a gang of small- and big-time criminals but not enough to remember to buy groceries or confirm I’m still breathing after a week of fucking off to god-knows-where.” 

Betty had an inkling that Jughead's home life was worse than he or Archie ever accidentally let on, but this revelation turns her stomach. 

“I’m so sorry.” It sounds silly to say it again, fruitless as it is, but it is still all she can think to say. 

“It is what it is, Betts.” No bite or bark this time: Jughead sounds tired—and defeated. 

“No,” she insists. “It’s not. It just means we need to double down on what we started yesterday.” 

“What about Mama Cooper? Can’t imagine she’ll let you off leash for this.” 

_Ouch,_ she wants to say. There’s a teasing tone to his voice but that still stings. 

As if on cue, Betty can hear her mother snap something at her dad down in the kitchen before yelling up, “Elizabeth Anne, you had better be awake I know you have a physics test today.” 

“I can buy us time if I tell her it’s a project for the paper. Which it is, technically. I’m _helping_ you, you know.” She says this harsher than she probably should for someone whose life has partially imploded. 

“I know you are. Cheap shot, I’m sorry.”

The whispers that happen after a Sweetwater blast are ten times more frenzied than usual when Betty arrives at school, desperate to find Jughead. Everybody who had been commending him two days ago were ready and willing to judge him just for who his father is. 

_We are not our parents,_ she wants to hiss at them all. _We are not our families._

It was what she wished she had the guts to say in the spring, that she wasn’t Polly, that she wasn’t their real target—not that Polly deserved their vitriol to begin with. 

They had to go to the clinic twice; the googling on costs had served them wrong and even with their combined wallets, they didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay. Debit cards were not an option, with Alice monitoring each and every line item on the monthly statement. 

_Elizabeth did you really spend $30 at Pop’s last Thursday? Pauline what could you have possibly needed at the drugstore that cost nearly $50?_

Four different brands of pregnancy tests, that’s what. 

Any time it would have taken to sell something of value online would be precious days lost; not just because hours without their parents around were few and far between, but because Polly was iffy on her _own_ timing and was wary of waiting another week. 

Betty drove them all the way to Elmdale to find a pawnshop out of Alice’s eagle eyes and Polly tearfully parts with a bracelet that had appeared quite suddenly about six months before. 

“It’s Jason,” Polly said on the drive back to the Greendale clinic. Her fingers traced lightly around the now-bare wrist. 

Jason _Blossom_ , Betty filled out silently. Jason Blossom the star quarterback, one half of the untouchable Blossom twin tier on the social ladder. Jason Blossom with the longtime girlfriend, away at her first year of college. _That_ Jason. 

“Do you love him?” Betty had asked. She had guessed the answer already and did not want to hear it confirmed. She asked for Polly, though, not for herself. 

Polly had smiled. “I do.” 

It had been the last time Betty saw a genuine smile on her sister’s face. It had also been the last time her palms and wrists had been free of little half-circle cuts.

When she finds Jughead in the _Blue & Gold _ office, Betty has no idea why she didn’t check here first. Well—she does. Usually _she’s_ in here in the mornings. And before a few days ago, she and Jughead butted heads so much that he—well, he didn't avoid her exactly, but he did not go out of his way to spend extra time with her.

His long limbs are extended awkwardly across the tops of three desks, hands threaded together to cradle the back of his head while he stares unblinking at the ceiling. 

“Jug?” 

A world-weary sigh, too exhausted for anybody their age, reverberates around the room. “Hey,” he answers, monotone. 

“Um,” Betty pauses, realizing she doesn’t know what to say. It had been easier just an hour ago, to speak more freely with him and comfort him. His physical presence is harder to reconcile with, yet it is different from their previous discomfort around each other. She can’t quite put her finger on why. 

And though she knows far better, her instinct is still to reach out for him—this inexplicable need to hold him and tell him they’ll figure it out. 

That they have to. 

Instead, she fidgets. 

Jughead stretches and his arms reach out behind him to touch a fourth desk. _Had he always been this tall,_ she wonders. Had he always been this… _distracting?_ His tshirt rides up, pulling free from the flannel tied at his waist, and Betty has to bring her own eyes to ceiling in order to quell the blush rising on her cheeks. 

There isn’t time for her to gather her thoughts before they’re joined by Veronica and Archie—holding hands. Betty smirks at Veronica, who shrugs but raises her eyebrow. _Later,_ she mouths. 

In her free hand is another tray of drinks. In Archie’s free hand is a grease-stained paper bag, likely full of doughnuts. 

Veronica is all business. “Jones, we have sustenance for you. Get up before you herniate a disc.”

That sigh again. 

“I have Pop’s crullers,” Archie offers. 

That gets him up. He rolls somewhat awkwardly off the desks to take their offerings, meeting nobody’s eyes. His gaze briefly flicks to Betty as he bites into the cruller, quick enough for her to question if it happened at all. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles through a full mouth. 

Archie claps a hand on his shoulder, kind but firm. “We’re gonna have to eventually, but alright, man.” Then quieter, theoretically for no one else to hear, “I talked to my dad and he didn’t know either. Spare room is set up if you want it.” 

If the situation weren’t so fucked up, Betty would laugh. Archie has never once successfully whispered in his life. 

The four of them sip their coffees in silence, but for the sound of Archie and Jughead chewing. Betty can barely stomach the latte for her nerves, though she knows the only way she’ll survive this is to be fully awake. 

When the bell rings, Jughead plasters on a cartoonish smile. “Another beautiful day at the salt mines, folks!” He bounds out of the room, leaving the rest of them to stare at each other. 

Veronica speaks first, “We all know he’s just waiting for us to leave so he can ditch and stay in here all day, right?” 

They nod. 

The end of the day finds Betty and Jughead sitting on the decrepit swings of Archie’s childhood swingset in his backyard, waiting for Fred and Archie to get home. Betty hadn’t needed to verbalize her offer to give Jughead a ride; he was waiting by her locker after the last bell with a scowl on his face, death glare aimed at anybody who so much as looked at him. 

That the scowl softens when he sees her sends a swooping sensation through her, like the first dip of a rollercoaster. 

“Anywhere but here,” he says. 

Much as Betty thinks a Pop’s burger would cheer him up, it will likely be too full of their classmates, or classmates’ parents, for the freedom he needs. 

No lights on in her house means no Alice or Hal yet, so Betty parks and they traipse through the back gate. 

Jughead braces his foot in the dried out dirt to push his swing back and forth lightly. Betty is almost too afraid to ask, but, “You still want to help take them down, right?” 

His voice is fierce. “More than ever.” 

A slamming door startles them both but instead of Archie coming to join them as expected, it’s Alice Cooper bursting through the fence gate. 

Betty hears Jughead swear under his breath, an oath she wishes she could echo herself but doesn’t dare risk. 

“Inside,” her mother grits out. “Now.” And then, to punctuate her request, Alice snatches her by the crook of her arm and pulls her up from the swing. Hard. 

When she stumbles and complains with an _ow, Mom,_ tripping over her own feet in an effort not to dislocate her shoulder, Jughead leaps to his feet with a mixture of panic and fear on his face. 

“ _Hey—”_ he starts, but Betty tosses a look over her shoulder and shakes her head. Alice isn’t worth fighting, not in this kind of mood. Even if Betty is touched by how Jughead wanted to come to her aid. 

Betty doesn’t get her elbow back until her mother shuts and deadbolts the door behind them. She makes a face and rubs at the indents from her mother’s nails. 

“Oh, calm down, Elizabeth. My manicure is the least of your problems if you’re spending time with that hooligan over there. Really, Betty, what are you thinking spending time with FP Jones’s son?” 

The spark of fire that has been burning inside her flares and Betty isn’t sure if she wants to flip her palms over to show her mother just how much damage a manicure can cause, or to defend Jughead and demand to know why she says _Jones_ like it’s a dirty word. 

“How did you even hear?” Betty mumbles instead, curling her palms and breathing evenly. 

“You don’t need to be up to date on silly high school gossip to know that the Southside is bad news, and the Jones family more than that. I’m surprised that the kid hasn’t dropped out to peddle drugs.” 

Betty thinks of Jughead’s confession that his dad doesn’t even feed him; his father may be a piece of work, and a gang leader at that, but it isn’t fair to group Jughead into that condemnation. She knows better, though. Classmates used her as a punching bag for Polly. Adults actively avoid her when they realize she is Alice’s daughter. 

“Polly dropped out,” she shoots back. 

The fight drains out of her mother and Betty almost feels bad for pulling that card. “Go upstairs, Betty. Do your homework. I don’t want to see you with that boy ever again. He’s bad news.” 

Heart in her throat, Betty stomps up the stairs as loudly as she can. It’s petulant and childlike, but if her mother is going to treat her like a child then maybe she’ll act like one. 

**_Sorry,_** she texts Jughead. For which of the many things happening, she isn’t sure. 

**_And here I thought you were the hardass journalist of the family._ **

His text makes her smile, even though she is trying to make _him_ feel better. 

For the first time, Betty spends ages composing a text message to a boy that will actually come from her. In middle school, she had helped Polly, and in the last year, she helped Veronica. Polly is not around to return the favor, having finally shed her infamy by fleeing to a state college across the country after passing the GED. Veronica seems to have had some success in her venture, if the hand-holding and moony eyes this morning were any indication; Betty doesn’t want to burst her bubble with… whatever this thing with Jughead might be. 

Might not be. Probably isn’t. 

It’s nothing. They’re classmates and coworkers on a student newspaper. Nothing more. 

Betty repeats this mantra as she crawls her way through the night’s homework, but gives up after writing what is likely the worst history assignment in her school career. Early decision college applications are looming and now isn’t the time to be slacking but some things are more important. 

Justice for Polly and Midge and Moose and Jughead and everybody else—this is what matters. 

It is what propels her away from her cluttered desk and over to where she tossed her phone in frustration two hours prior. 

A few emoji-laden messages from Veronica that she’ll get to after calling Jughead, who has apparently used their text thread as a brainstorming location. There are blocks of text, mostly nonsensical. She calls on speaker phone to allow for a cursory read of what he’s said.

He picks up with a, “You can ignore messages one, three, and four. I already realized those assumptions and theories are wrong.” 

“Jughead,” Betty chastises, “You’ve eaten something and had water, right?” 

“Food, yes. Water, no. Coffee, definitely.” 

“You’re going to burn a hole in your stomach and burn _out,_ if you don’t take a breath.” She should know, but Betty doesn’t want to get into that with him. 

A sharp _Elizabeth_ comes from outside her bedroom door and Betty is quick to throw her phone down and reach for her computer. Alice pokes her head in, “I heard voices.” 

Betty gestures with her laptop. “I finished my homework and was taking a break to watch a movie, that’s all.” 

Alice purses her lips. “You should work on your college applications, not watch television.” 

“Mom,” she pleads, doing her best to not turn it into a whine. She realizes, belatedly, that if he hasn’t hung up, Jughead can hear all of this. 

“Push your computer back a bit at least. You’ll get wrinkles squinting at the light that closely.” The door shuts with a satisfying _snick_ of the latch and Betty dashes over to listen for her mother’s retreating footsteps before locking it and picking up the phone. 

“Jug? You still there?” 

“Wow,” he teases. “Should I be worried about _my_ crow’s feet?” 

“Only if you’re also expected to bag a future lawyer-doctor before graduating college to secure your financial future and then birth future Ivy League graduates before 30.” Betty takes his silence as an acknowledgement that she isn’t kidding. “Anyway,” Betty waves her hands, hoping to clear her own mind as much as drag the conversation away from her absurd mother. “Walk me through what you’re thinking.” 

She thinks she can hear Jughead swallow on the other end, possibly holding back another sarcastic comment. “It’s not worth it,” he says eventually. “I don’t know how to shut my brain off. Normally I ride out the insomnia. It’s when I write best. All I have now is illogical gibberish” 

“I wish I could help distract you.” The words fall out of her mouth before she can gather them back, her face burning at the implication. Betty holds her breath, waiting for the jab to come or for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. “I… I just mean, like the case—” 

Jughead surprises her. Or rather, she is surprised by him once more. Betty is beginning to think she has misunderstood him so deeply. “I mean, if you want, you actually could watch a movie. We could watch one together, if there’s something we both have.” 

“Oh,” she says. 

It’s his turn to stammer in reaction to silence, “Nah, nevermind that was stupid. You don’t have insomnia, I shouldn’t subject you to that.” 

“No, Jug, I think that sounds great actually. I could use a dis—” she swallows her tongue, knowing there is no way she can finish that phrase without it sounding like an invitation for goddamn phone sex. 

(Oh god does she _want_ phone sex with Jughead Jones? Is that why her brain jumped there? This is _not the time,_ Betty growls to these confusing baser instincts.) 

He laughs, light and almost melodic, and it reaches Betty all the way to her toes. “A distraction, yeah. Alright, Cooper, you have one chance to wow me with your movie tastes.” 

.

.

.

_tbc_


	2. veronica, 3:15pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this, uh, got a bit out of control. I make no apologies. except to iconicponytail who had to field all my shocked 'oh my god it's this many words long now???' every other day for the past month. additional thanks for her last minute help when I panicked about plotholes in a 22k chapter. if there are typos, though, that's all on me. 
> 
> some things to note for this chapter, trigger-wise: there are mentions, but no scenes, of parental abuse and a resulting accidental injury; mentions of a hypothetical forced outing, mentions of biphobia.

_If I could find a way to see this straight, I’d run away  
_ _To some fortune that I should have found by now  
_ _I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down_

* * *

If Jughead had been presented with two facts even 48 hours prior—first that his father is the head of the local gang and second that he had stayed on the phone with Betty Cooper until she fell asleep—he would assume he’d hit his head and become concussed. 

And that assumption wouldn’t be in disbelief about his dad’s criminal activities. 

But here he is, with a snoozed alarm, staring at his call log from the previous night: Betty Cooper, inbound call, 1h42m. She called to check on him, said something vaguely flirtatious and he just… ran with it. Jughead can’t even lie to himself that they stayed on the phone and watched _Casablanca_ together because he truly needed the distraction. Archie had been 20 feet away and more than willing to play video games or eat themselves into a sugar coma if Jughead really needed _distraction._

No, he listened to Betty softly quote the movie to herself until falling asleep about halfway through because he didn’t want to stop talking to her. 

Jughead doesn’t quite recognize this version of himself. 

Betty’s presence in his early years irked him: playdates with Archie usually meant Betty would poke her head through the gate and ask to play, even when pirates turned into swings turned into Fred building them a clubhouse up in the large maple. On one particular day when Betty interrupted but was called back to her house by Alice, Jughead finally asked why Archie always let her come over. 

“She’s my best friend,” he shrugged. 

Even then, Jughead’s fear of being second choice was strong—call it preemptive self-defense for when his mom would bail three years later—but his tact, less so. 

“Fine,” Jughead had grumbled. “I’ll just go home then so you can hang out with your real best friend.”

Archie then tossed a Nerf football right at his retreating form. “No, dummy, you’re both my best friends. I’m allowed to have more than one best friend!”

It sounded so simple in 10-year-old Archie’s words, but Jughead harbored that insecure resentment all the way through their teen years. 

Well, all the way up until Betty decided to go on the wildest of all goose chases and asked for his help, apparently. 

His hair is too greasy for even the beanie to hide, so as he brushes his teeth and takes a quick shower, he does his best to focus on the tasks at hand instead. Morning grogginess works in his favor, daydreaming of all the cereal choices downstairs instead of Betty’s sleepy voice over the phone. 

Then his phone vibrates on the bathroom counter. 

_Speak of the devil,_ Jughead thinks, when her name pops up with a new text. _Angel? Oh, Christ what is wrong with me._

**_Veronica wants to know if you want doughnuts or bagels.  
_ ** **_And yes, I already told her to get both._ **

If Betty had already answered Veronica—this text is moot, isn’t it? 

Is he, Jughead Jones, trying to read between lines that likely do not exist in a message from a girl? From _Betty Cooper,_ of all people? Betty Cooper, his—admittedly arbitrary—opponent since grade school? 

He goes with his gut, as always, and skates past the emotional speculation. **_Veronica has seen me eat, she should know better than to question that._ **

It occurs to him as he taps send that Betty now knows one of the reasons for his eating habits, teenage growth spurts notwithstanding. Eat what you can, while you can. 

Betty took the bombshell about his dad in stride, without pity or pause—the same attitude that she told him helped her through the Sweetwater fallout last spring. He had treated her as normal. But normalcy of family life or high school social status is not something Jughead could ever achieve—then again there are no rules of etiquette for Betty to follow on this. Emily Post likely hasn’t written a chapter on how to politely discuss the revelation that your friend’s father is a criminal. 

Alice Cooper might have a few suggestions for her, though. Namely that Betty stay the fuck away from said friend and his father. 

Jughead has heard enough about Betty’s family through Archie to know that her mother is a piece of work. He had always scoffed. Better to have an overbearing mother than an absent one. 

Seeing Alice in action, though, has Jughead reevaluating. 

Betty’s past blasé jokes now take on a darker tint and he regrets the quips he’d made in return, especially the short leash one last night. Perhaps he wanted to test the waters, see if he could banter her back into a good mood. All it had accomplished was offense. 

Jughead knows she won’t hold it against him—Betty doesn’t hold anything against anyone. Except Sweetwater Secrets. 

He shakes himself back into focus. This isn’t the time for harping on long phone calls and controlling mothers—those sharp manicured nails digging into Betty’s arm, though—or whether these texts are light teasing or flirting. 

It’s time to figure out what the fuck is going on. 

If Jughead had no idea about FP’s extracurricular activities, and he lives with the guy—mostly—how on earth was the anonymous gossip app powerhouse supposed to know? Though a big leap to take, Jughead supposes the only logical answer is that someone is tailing him, or is tailing FP. Or both of them. 

For now, he chooses to harp on the logistics of _how_ someone knows these things about FP and not the _why_ of the reveal. Later, when this open wound stops flowing blood, Jughead will track down FP and demand answers. When he can’t smell the coffee that Fred brewed for the three of them this morning. When he can maybe look Fred in the eye, though god knows when that might be.

It is hard to reconcile this new reality, the one where his father can now be universally accepted as a bad, criminal person as opposed to only Jughead knowing that he’s a poor excuse for a parent. Fred, of anybody, Jughead should be able to talk to. Fred’s been friends with FP since their own high school days; before they were Archie-and-Jughead, their fathers were Fred-and-FP. 

The way Jughead sees it, though, is that he and Fred have both been let down by FP Jones, Jr. for their whole lives. Fred just happens to have more years on him. 

He snags some of Archie’s clean clothes from the laundry, accepting that if he’s going to give in and stay, as Fred had not-so-subtly suggested last night, he needs to pack up some of his shit from the trailer. Then after he pours some of the still-brewing coffee into his beat-up mug, Jughead hightails it out of the Andrews house before Fred can get back from the morning walk with Vegas. 

He’s drained the thermos by the time he unlocks the door to the _Blue & Gold _ office. For the third morning in a row, he finds himself awaiting the appearance of Veronica Lodge. Exclusively for the food and caffeine she will bring, but _still._

Veronica’s presence is an occupational hazard of spending time with Betty, and now that he is all-in on Betty’s quest to find the man behind the curtain of Sweethwater, Jughead will bite his tongue. As long as Veronica does the same. 

While he waits, Jughead examines the timeline he and Betty constructed and drums his fingers against the empty metal. They’re working backwards from the most recent posts on the app—or what had been most recent prior to his own callout—X’s for each post and then circles for each event referenced. The link breaks off around the previous spring, a pause that he had gently imposed when scrolling back in the app and seeing that the next one to read after something about a love triangle among sophomores was the one about Polly. Betty as scribe, with the better handwriting, had her back to him when he reached the offending post, which he had been thankful for. 

The pair of them now act as bookends to this warped calendar. With a sigh, Jughead grabs a sheet of printer paper and tapes it up to the side of the chalkboard, where the start of their line had been. He extends the line in a messy pencil scribble, then marks the X. 

J. JONES 24 HOUR ALERT, he writes. Then pauses. His plan had always been to ignore the proposition, but had he not—how was he supposed to _respond?_

There’s no comment function on the app, cruelty disguised as kindness; the vitriol is kept away from the platform and funneled directly into their halls. He and Betty were so swept up in the information itself that they did not take the time to look at the app. Swiping around, Jughead sees that while the main feed is still the same, there’s a small envelope icon in the top right hand corner he had missed. 

One tap brings up a crudely animated ticking time bomb. **_IS YOUR TIME NEARLY UP? TRUTH OR QUEST, ANSWER BELOW_ **with a box to fill in your name and a choice in boxes to check. 

The app updated recently, Jughead realizes. It must have been sometime between his 1am post Monday morning and his own 6:32am message on Tuesday. He adds a new symbol to the timeline—a box for the app software updates. 

The real clock ticks closer to the bell, with neither Betty nor Veronica in sight. Jughead hopes they don’t arrive together. He could use the extra few minutes with Betty before he kicks into overdrive to keep up with Veronica’s repartee. 

He tries to come up with an excuse for why he needs those extra minutes and comes up with nothing. Veronica knows about their investigation, there’s no need for secrecy. All there is, is that he wants to hang out with Betty. All these things that used to drive Jughead insane during meetings have become weirdly endearing; where he once found her stubborn and overbearing, he realizes she is feisty and passionate. 

Jughead certainly learned better in the spring that Betty was not the prim, proper, stick-up-her-ass, and do-it-all-by-the-book wet blanket he made her out to be growing up. She shouldered every undeserved blow for Polly and didn’t let anyone see her crack. Seeing her silently sobbing in the office had humanized her, almost. 

And now? Now he definitely knows better. 

The girl in question blazes through the doorway, flushed and a bit out of breath. Something in him yearns to show off his new discovery with pride. 

Jughead pauses, wanting to ensure that Betty’s frantic air only has to do with running late. “Everything alright?” 

“Oh, um. Yeah. Yes. Fine.” 

“Well you have me convinced.” 

A smile quirks at the corners of her lips. “It’s not investigation-related, don’t worry about it. Just my mom being… my mom.” 

Jughead thinks back to those sharp nails on Betty’s arm, and bristles. He has been on the receiving end of Archie’s awkward hedging to know that there is no delicate way to ask this, but— 

“Did she...?” 

Betty shakes her head before he can finish. The relief in not having to finish the question or hear the other possible answer washes over him. 

“No, Alice prefers psychological trauma that’s all.” Betty flexes her hands into fists around the straps of her backpack but shoves them into her sweater pockets after noticing his gaze. 

Jughead swallows, keeping his voice light so as not to put her on the offensive. “That still doesn’t convince me you’re alright right now, Betts.” 

When the redness on her cheeks intensifies, Jughead has to wonder if the shortening of her name was a step too far. 

“It’s nothing _bad_ , nothing like that. She just…” Betty trails off, looking like she could flee. Her discomfort chews at his stomach. “ _God,_ she cornered me in the kitchen this morning about birth control because she doesn’t want me to end up ‘like Polly’ and a random Thursday several months after the fact seemed to be the best time for that.” It all comes out in an embarrassed rush and Jughead can see her hands fidgeting within her pockets. He stares at a point just to the left of her shoes. 

Her next comment is mumbled, more to herself than out loud but he hears it crystal clear. “Not that there’s much to worry about when nobody even wants to date me, let alone do—” she cuts herself off. 

“Yeah, well, we all know our classmates are mostly morons.” The words fall out of his mouth before Jughead can stop and he knows his face is turning a red to rival hers. 

One of Betty’s hands is on her way to her mouth, as though to bite a nail, and it stops short. 

“I—” 

“Um—” 

“Have I missed anything important?” Veronica breaks the silence and, for once, Jughead is happy to see her. 

Betty whirls around to face her and Jughead is grateful she isn’t staring in shock at him anymore, even if Veronica seems to catalog his every flinch. 

More interesting, though, is Archie’s presence. His arm slings over Veronica’s shoulder and there is a distinct smudge of purple on his bottom lip—the exact shade of Veronica’s lipstick. 

_Oh, Archie,_ he sighs. _What are you doing?_ But out loud he says, “That’s not your color, Arch,” before tapping his mouth in signal. 

Archie looks bashful, but pleased. Veronica is smug. “I’d say it works, actually.” 

Jughead pretends to throw up. The bell rings and he takes his bag of breakfast foods from Veronica’s grasp, but not before carefully removing Betty’s coffee from the drink tray and passing it to her behind him. She still looks a little pink when their hands brush in the exchange. 

The rest of the morning is predictably miserable. He skipped most of his classes the day before, save for AP Lit, because if he was going to subject himself to open whispers and taunts then he was only going to do it for the one class he doesn’t hate. 

That it is also a class he shares with Betty is beside the point. 

Much as he would love to bail on the whole day again, Jughead is wary of ditching so many classes back to back. It is also a lab day in physics, so Jughead suffers for the sake of his GPA. A good GPA and a bullshit essay about _overcoming his circumstances_ should hopefully nab him a scholarship to get the fuck out of Riverdale. 

He regrets the choice the moment he steps into the classroom and sees Bret Wallis’s smug, punchable face in his usual lab seat. 

“I asked Dr. Flutesnoot if we could rotate lab partners a week early, Forsythe.” 

“Goodie for me.” Jughead glares. Bret is made up of everything that should have put him in some absurdly expensive prep school, yet he is here, and he maintains the air of someone who knows he should be somewhere better, coiffed hair and leather shoes and all. 

Bret also lost out on the captain and first string quarterback position to Archie, a fact that Jughead relished in. 

Jughead grinds his teeth so hard through class in efforts to not snap Bret’s head off that he may have chipped a molar. The ring of the bell is sweet relief. 

As he tries to shove his notebooks in his bag and get the hell out, Bret steps in his way. “I wanted to make sure you knew,” Bret intones, “that my family donates a lot of money to the food bank in Riverdale.” 

Jughead can’t quite tell where this is going, but he knows it’s nowhere good. 

“I imagine, your father being who he is, that you relied a lot on those handouts, Forsythe. So, in a way, you are awfully indebted to me, don’t you think?” 

_Bastard_ , Jughead seethes. An incorrect one, because FP is too proud to ever be seen at the food bank, but a bastard nonetheless. 

The way to deal with dickheads like Bret is to never let them see you sweat. It’s the same way he dealt with his father, the same thing his father taught him the day his mom bailed—never let them see you cry, either. 

“How nice of your parents,” he starts. “Though are you sure they’re actually yours? Surely people that charitable could never have produced such a slimy, jumped-up bastard, right? What are we thinking, a switched at birth type thing?” 

Bret slams a fist on the table, rattling beakers and test tubes. Jughead smirks. Good to know he’s found a nerve. 

The whole day feels off-kilter until Jughead holes up in the _Blue & Gold _office during his last period study. His shoulders relax and he is even able to focus on actual classwork long enough to answer the short essay questions for AP Lit. 

When Betty walks in after the final bell, calm washes over him as he watches her methodically pull out her notebooks and pens. 

“Can we do a bit of homework first?” She looks contrite, as though feeling guilty for needing to do work. Jughead nods and waves his class copy of _Beloved_ in agreement. 

After reading for a bit, he comes across a truly illegible margin note from a previous student and squints. “Hey, Betts,” he calls out. “What the _hell_ do you think this scribble says?” 

Betty perks up and walks over, but is tentative in how she places herself near him to look at the book. 

“I… have no idea. Are those even letters?” 

When Jughead looks up to joke further, he is surpised by how close her face is to his, crouched down to peer over his shoulder. The words on the tip of his tongue disappear as they lock eyes. 

Over on the large teacher’s desk, Betty’s phone vibrates hard against the rings of her spiral notebook. The case is cute, little stars on a light blue background. He isn’t sure how he didn’t notice it before. The noise startles both of them, but Jughead feels the wind knock out of his sails when his own phone buzzes in his back pocket. It announces itself by making a terrible noise where it is pressed against the table by his perch. 

_For the love of all that is good and holy and fried,_ he swears. _Who now?_

He would be thrilled to learn this notification is Veronica wheedling his phone number out of Archie and putting the four of them into text—as long as this simultaneous buzzing doesn’t mean what he thinks. 

Betty glances reproachfully at where her phone sits. 

“Down the rabbit hole we go,” he says, retrieving his phone. Betty sighs and does the same. 

Jughead’s eyes skip over the specifics in an effort to seek out the name. It’s not that he relishes in someone else’s pain but—he’s quite relieved to see Reggie Mantle is the one walking the plank today. 

Based on the way Betty is schooling her expression, she feels the same way. Stoic, she pulls another piece of printer paper to write on. 

“Schadenfreude?” he guesses. 

Betty just hums as she takes a step back to assess and eyeball where to place it. “I think we started too big,” she says in a wry voice, standing on her tiptoes. 

“You may have a point.” He comes up to help, but realizes in doing so, he would have to press himself practically on top of Betty and that—that is not a thing either of them seem equipped to deal with. Instead he drags over a random stool, gesturing that she should use it to stand on. “I guess most investigation murder boards aren’t quite so linear.”

She stands back to squint at it. “I would say we should fix it before we wrap around the whole room but that would imply I doubt our ability to figure it out.” The next step backwards she takes has her stumbling into him and lining them up in the exact way Jughead thought he had successfully avoided mere moments before. 

Her whispered _oh, god, sorry_ warms his chest and goes all the way to his toes. It takes a moment for him to emit a strangled, _it’s fine._

Betty’s phone rings, ending both of their floundering. She flies away from him like a repelled magnet and he thinks he should be offended until she answers it and says, “Hi, yes, Mom, I am packing up my bag right now, I’ll be out front in a minute.” Betty hangs up, then flashes him an apologetic look. “Talk later?” 

Jughead nods and waves her out, but doesn’t miss her knuckles flexing white around her phone or the pained expression on her face when she thinks she is out of sight. 

If Betty can face her overbearing mother day in, day out, then Jughead can manage a trip back to a trailer that is almost certainly empty. 

In theory. 

The walk to Sunnyside is usually about 20 minutes, but Jughead drags his feet to give himself time to think. Probably too much time. 

By the time he sees the rickety, faded sign, Jughead has had three separate hypothetical arguments with his father; two of them involve walking into the Jones trailer and FP actually being there, one while he’s drunk, one sober. 

His father’s motorcycle is parked there, as is the older one with the questionable engine that FP taught him to ride on one of his better years back in his freshman year, but it is a relief to walk through the door and know that the third likely argument will, in fact, occur over the phone—if that.

The trailer is as he left it a few days prior, virtually untouched: dregs of coffee left in the pot, several cereal dishes stacked in the sink, all of FP’s work boots kicked into a pile behind the doorway, and recycling free of beer bottles. He supposes he should be happy that FP isn’t one six-pack deep at 4pm. Still, it doesn’t sit well that his father hasn’t been home in nearly three days. 

There aren’t that many places he could be and Jughead could probably hit them all and still be back to Elm Street to talk to Fred about all of this before Archie gets back from practice. 

He also could go back there now and deal with his deadbeat, gang-affiliated father another time. 

Plan B sounds better. 

Well, technically he follows Plan C. 

Plan B would have been the half hour walk back to Elm Street and while it’s still early into fall, it was windy on the walk here and honestly? Fuck that. 

He throws his meager belongings into a duffle bag and tosses a few drawers—finding $20 in the process that FP will not miss—until he can locate the key to the second bike. It takes a few tries to start and it sounds... not great, but it gets him the few miles across town. 

It also has the added bonus of likely pissing off Betty’s mom when he parks it in front of Fred’s garage, right in view of Alice Cooper’s pristine kitchen. 

Briefly, he wonders if it is visible from Betty’s bedroom window. Something in him, something twisty and uncomfortable, hopes it is.

Before he can crane his neck to locate her window—he’s fairly certain it’s the one directly across from Archie’s—Fred is at the back door, leaning against its frame. 

“Your dad know you took that?” 

“Does it even matter?” Jughead bites his response and regrets it immediately. He can’t put himself in hot water with Fred, not if he wants a place to sleep that has heat. 

Fred’s critical eye softens, as though recognizing his defense mechanism and electing to ignore it. Or perhaps he sees the overstuffed backpack and the duffel bag in the open seat compartment. Perhaps he realizes that his deadbeat best friend’s kid is on the path to deadbeat as well if he doesn’t intervene. Fred’s expression is weary, as though he knows this situation is going to age him. 

“I’m sorry, kid,” Fred tells him. More than anything, this is the apology that stings. 

He mumbles, “Don’t be,” and wishes he could sink into the ground. Still, Fred places a warm hand on his shoulder as he comes through the door. 

“You’ve always got a home here, Jughead. You aren’t responsible for your father anymore than I am.” 

Jughead swallows hard, nods. 

Betty calls him again, later that night—after her mom has gone to sleep, he assumes. 

She confirms as much. “My dad is ‘sleeping at the office tonight’ so Alice took a red wine chaser with her Ambien tonight. I may as well be home alone.” Betty pauses for a beat too long after that. He wonders if she’s realizing that with only a slight change of tone, that could have been an invitation. 

That twisty thing in his gut leaps at the thought. 

Jughead breaks the silence in an effort to chastise himself. “What do you think Reggie’s going to choose?” 

Betty laughs bitterly. “Come on, you know he can’t turn down a challenge. And I won’t exactly be sorry if he embarrasses himself.” 

A flash of memory, not one he witnessed, but of Archie’s enraged recount: Reggie cornering Betty after school and saying something about _not being successful in hiding that she’s as easy as her sister_ and yanking open the top buttons of her blouse. Betty slapped him and Archie had been ready to put his head into a locker, but Betty pleaded that he leave it be. 

Jughead swallows down his own anger, speaking carefully. He remembers Betty saying that she appreciated him treating her like normal in the spring and—this is normal to ask, to take her mind off things, right? “Do you want to watch another movie?”

It’s his turn to fall asleep on the phone; Jughead wakes up to his usual alarm blaring in his ear, where it is still half cradled under his shoulder. His computer had gone to sleep at some point, apparently after _Rear Window_ ended, and the timestamp on Betty’s teasing text is right around 11:50. 

**_Goodnight, Snoring Beauty!_ **

He’s still grinning when Archie backs them out of the driveway and pauses, a strange look on his face. “What’s _your_ deal?” 

“My deal?” Jughead takes a long drag from his Andrews Construction travel mug in an attempt to obscure his face. 

“I dunno, you just seem in a weird mood.” 

That mild cheerfulness is so out of the norm it registers as _weird_ entertains him. 

“Slept well, I guess.” Archie is still staring, so Jughead diverts. “You’re looking awfully smitten this morning, Archibald.” 

As if on cue, Archie’s phone dings from its location in the cup holder; a quick glance tells Jughead it’s from _Ronnie,_ whose contact card also includes a star and heart emoji. 

“In my defense,” Archie mumbles. “She changed that herself.” 

“I’m just happy you’re happy, man.” It’s as close to approval Jughead is willing to give for now; Veronica still feels like a question mark in his book. But he supposes if Betty would go to bat for her, and vice versa, she couldn’t be all that bad. 

Betty herself is impossible to find that morning. He wonders if her mother waylaid her again about— _god_ —precautions again and also has to consider the fact that the original conversation occurred after Alice saw her daughter with him _._ That particular assumption feels more like an attack from Betty’s mother than if it had come from anyone else. 

It does feel like an interrogation from Veronica, who also appears in the newspaper office looking for Betty. “Oh did you,” she asks pointedly, after he tells her he hasn’t heard from Betty since last night. “Anything to share with the class, Jones?” 

“Nope.” He lets the ‘p’ pop as he plucks his doughnut from her hand. 

Betty doesn’t make an appearance until lunch, looking as disheveled as he has ever seen her. Not that it is remotely disheveled by normal standards, but her ponytail is lopsided and she is wearing an oversized Riverdale High sweatshirt. 

“Everything okay?” 

“Um, not exactly.” 

Veronica slides in next to her on the table bench and Jughead sighs internally at her constant presence. “Depends who you ask, actually. A _B_ is a perfectly acceptable grade on a test.” 

“Tell that to my mother,” Betty mutters. “She has the grade portal set up for _text alerts_ and Ms. Shapely must have been inputting as she graded alphabetically so I woke up to a lecture about GPA averages. _B’s in physics won’t get you in Yale, Elizabeth._ I don’t even _want_ to go to Yale.”

She sighs, hanging her head in her hands, and Jughead wishes he were on the opposite side of the bench to put the reassuring hand on her shoulder that Veronica does. He swallows the instinct to glare at her stupid, bright red nails where they sit on the navy fabric. 

“Alice Cooper can bite me. Considering you took that test after this new wave of app bullshit started, I’d say a B is damn good.” Veronica echoes his thoughts, at least.

Betty’s section with Shapely must have taken their test after his own did with Flutesnoot; Jughead didn’t realize this ‘poor’ grade correlated with the implosion of his home life. He is oddly touched that she cared enough to be distracted during a test—for _him_ of all people. 

“I’m already on thin ice after, um,” Betty glances his way, clearly unsure of whether to share that her mother physically dragged her away from him. He shrugs at her, letting her take the lead. “Just... with everything,” she finishes. “So this won’t help her control levels. I am now ordered to come directly home after school everyday and my bedroom door needs to be open while I study so she can _ensure I’m staying on task.”_

This may mean an end to their late night movie calls, Jughead realizes. Though, to be fair, two nights in a row do not a habit make. Something can’t end if it has never started. 

When he handed over _The Blue & Gold _ editor role _,_ Adam’s parting advice had been to avoid micromanaging—though that had mostly been directed at Betty. “If you check on them too often, they’ll start coming to you with a hundred questions every day. Keep it laid back and you’ll just have to deal with questions on deadline days. But—” to Jughead “—don’t stay back and let them run wild. You two will figure it out.” 

They had, begrudgingly. 

Biweekly meetings and then ‘open’ hours in the off-weeks. Fortunately, this commitment is something Mrs. Cooper permits under Betty’s lockdown, so they are able to get more time to work together. Not as fortunately, it means they’re both stuck here, working on actual paper tasks, lest someone come in for assistance and see their board of chaos on Sweetwater Secrets. 

They ostensibly could work on their Sweetwater investigation but it would be an uncomfortable conversation. 

For her part, Betty is hard at work copyediting, pen trapped between her teeth as she examines hard copies of all the articles for the next print issue. Where he once had been irked by her insistence on saving the dying art of print journalism— _dormant,_ she would always snap back at him—he has to admire the dedication. 

Adam could not have given less of a shit about the paper itself, just the fact that it was on his college application and he got to boss underclassmen around. 

Betty, though? Betty loves it. (Even if he’s certain that some of the underclassmen are terrified by her intensity.) 

None of the underlings have come in for the first 20 minutes and Jughead desperately wants to pull up the yellowing projector screen to uncover their notes. Almost as desperately, he wants to watch the bounce of Betty’s ponytail each time she marks something and the peek of her tongue when she wets her lips before replacing the pen to its position.

He isn’t exactly an expert in the whirlwind of teenage hormones, but Jughead knows that of _all things_ it isn’t common to be turned on by copyediting

It does not help that under her Riverdale hoodie, now discarded, she wears a shirt that scoops low to expose the scattered freckles on her breastbone and dips when she leans over the papers and—god what the hell is he doing. There are at least twelve things he should focus on before the pale strap of Betty Cooper’s bra. 

Slumping down in the desk, Jughead reaches his feet forward as far as they will go and stretches to clear his head. The satisfying pops from his back help shake things off until he looks up to see the pen mid-air on its way back to Betty’s lips and Betty herself watching him. 

Jughead straightens. Blinks. Thinks he might be imagining Betty’s blush. Wants to bang his head against the desk when Trev Brown walks in and beelines for her. 

He can’t hear what they’re talking over the angry buzzing in his ears when Trev leans on the large desk and moves closer to her. 

If Jughead didn’t already know that Trev is the nicest person in their school, he might think that he is trying to look down Betty’s shirt. And he is ridiculous, hormonal garbage for already calculating how much one could see from that perch on the desk. 

Some words filter through Jughead’s annoyance—and cleavage-induced mental fog. 

“I’ll see you at the game tomorrow, right?” 

Damn him and his innocently charming smile. Betty seems to falter, which lifts Jughead’s mood. “Oh, well, of course. I’m always at Archie’s games.” 

That innocently charming smile flickers and Jughead feels ill-begotten triumph over it.

When Trev exits, Jughead notices a light flush crawling up her neck. It is decidedly more pronounced than any blush _his_ interactions have garnered and that twisty feeling is back. 

The thought is usurped at tandem buzzing of their phones. 

**_Quest it is, Reginald. Stay tuned._ **

* * *

Thursday afternoon finds Archie in Veronica’s passenger seat, parked in a far corner of the RHS lot with a lapful of Veronica and those goddamn practice shorts. They are both a bit damp from the rain they dashed through to get here so the material is slick and tight on her skin. He had found them cruel all the way until now, when he is able to run his hands up the back of her thighs, teasing lightly under the hem with his thumbs. 

He is rewarded with a shiver and a not-so-gentle tug of his hair, where Veronica is making a mess of his wet hair. His groan vibrates with their mouths connected and Veronica kisses him back with more fervor. Any more of her writhing in his lap might put them in territory too scandalous for the parking lot, even if they are under the partial cover of the sinking sun. Overly conscious of this, Archie moves to gently push her back but with the low ceiling of her car, it only results in accidentally pressing her right down onto his fast-growing problem. 

Breaking away with a hiss, Archie catches a glint in Veronica’s eye before she moves her mouth down his neck and trails one hand away from his hair, ghosting over his abs before— 

“Ah, fuck, Ronnie,” he moans. “We are so not in the right place for this.”

“And?” she teases. 

_And_ _indeed,_ Archie sighs. “And much as I would love to, I also don’t want to do this particular walk of shame in my front door. Option A is my dad, Option B is Jug, and C is total mortification with both of them.” 

Veronica pouts, but backs up a few inches. “Dads and weird best friends are a mood killer, Archiekins, but point taken.” 

Archie leans up to give her one more deep kiss. It goes a little longer than planned until Veronica is squarely back on top of him. Zero complaints. 

His skin feels hot and flushed under his shirt and his brain may as well be scrambled eggs, because when Veronica arches under his touch, words come spilling out all in a rush: “ _fuckronnieilikeyousomuchyou’reincredible.”_

She slows down the pace of her mouth on his Adam’s apple, lightly kissing her way back to his mouth. His face is aflame, and Archie braces himself for the fallout of showing his hand, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration. Instead, Veronica’s lips smooth over his scrunched brow. 

“About time,” she croons. 

He doesn’t quite understand and tells her as much. 

“Oh, Archie.” Veronica pecks him once more, ghosts her fingers over his waistband and smirks when his hips lift involuntarily. “We’ve had this date from the very beginning.” 

The gears turn slowly until something clicks in his brain and—

“We could have been doing this for a whole year,” he asks dumbly. 

She answers him with a kiss that still has him dizzy long after he’s back into his own car and halfway home. 

Not that he entirely expected him to be, but Jughead isn’t there when Archie gets back to the house. He knows it had taken a lot for Jug to fully accept the extended hospitality last night—the offer has been standing for, quite literally, their entire lives—but hoped that once his friend was all-in, he would at least not tiptoe around it anymore. 

There’s the chance that Jug might be with Betty, but as a glance out the window confirms, Betty is doing homework alone in her room. 

(Archie isn’t quite sure if he did or didn’t want to spot Jughead in Betty’s room. Yes, he’d like to know where he is but at the same time… he can’t quite wrap his head around how quickly the two of them had laid down arms after years and years of merely tolerating each other for his benefit.) 

If his dad is also concerned about Jughead’s absence, he doesn’t say anything. Perhaps it is because he has other things on his mind, because Fred walks in the back door and immediately asks, “Okay I’m still confused about this app thing. I can sort of see how it works for in-school gossip but how does whoever runs this find out something like they did about Jug? Especially if none of us even knew? And what exactly is the truth or dare part? What was Jughead’s dare? And what does the quest mean?” 

Archie raises his eyebrows. “Been thinking about this all day or something, Dad?” 

Dad shrugs. “It was a slow day with all this rain on and off. I got curious.” 

“Frozen pizza?” he offers. “This is probably going to take more concentration than we can give if either of us are trying to cook.” While the oven preheats, Archie makes a show of reading the instructions as carefully as possible, as though he hasn’t done this at least a couple times a week in the five years since his parents’ divorce and his mother’s move. 

His dad clears his throat, perched by the fridge—like he knows that the direction of the conversation will dictate his choice of a soda or a beer to go with the pizza. 

“Okay, so,” Archie hedges. “Yeah, it’s basically a gossip app. And, like, totally anonymous. It’d be impossible to really tell anything about who runs it. Even if you think you’re starting to narrow it down, then someone you were thinking of gets hit. And no one is safe. Clearly, I guess, with Jug. 

“But, y’know, even someone like Reggie Mantle! He’s been such a pompous ass about it since he was picked for the truth or dare yesterday, and he picked dare. Well, quest, really, it’s a Gryphons and … _something_ thing.” 

“Gargoyles,” his dad supplies. 

“What?”

“Gryphons and Gargoyles quests. I played when I was your age.” 

Archie tries to suppress a snicker at the idea of his jock-extraordinaire dad playing a nerdy game that someone like Dilton Doiley plays. His dad sees right through it and quirks a smile. “Don’t judge, Arch.” 

He raises his hands in surrender, and continues. “It’s been around since before any of us were even freshmen so it must have been handed off at some point, assuming someone at school runs it. _Oh—_ ” Archie pulls his phone out and starts a group text thread with Betty and Jug “—I should probably tell them that, but I’m sure they thought of it already.” 

“Tell who?” 

_Shit._ His dad may be incensed enough to do something about the app, but parentful influence probably would only go as far as complaining to Weatherbee and maybe getting the app shut down. He probably won’t like the idea of Jughead and Betty getting in over their heads on it, especially not if—like Jug thinks—someone is following FP or is connected with whatever it is the Serpents do. 

The longer Archie blinks like a deer in headlights, the narrower Fred’s gaze becomes. 

He is saved by the bell, literally, when the front door rings. 

They exchange a confused glance. 

“Oh, Jug might not actually have a key yet, I think I forgot to give him a copy yesterday. But he knows where the spare is…” Archie is still mid-thought when he hears his dad open the front door and swear vehemently in a way he has never heard before. His stomach drops to his toes. “Dad?” 

It _is_ Jughead, who looks like he got caught in the rainstorm and resembles a post-bath puppy. Jughead, who also has a bruise and a cut on his cheek. 

“Jesus, Jug,” Archie rushes over and Jughead flinches. It shatters him in a way he can’t put a name to. 

His dad is pacing, muttering to himself something that sounds vaguely like _I am going to fucking murder him._

“I’m fine, Fred,” Jughead tries to placate. “It—it wasn’t actually _him_. Just the bottle he tossed in my direction.” 

“That isn’t any better, Jughead.” His dad snaps loudly, enough for even Jughead to look taken aback. 

Archie knows the look coming over Jughead’s face, the one that signals a patented self-deprecating spiral, like he is about to blame himself for this entire situation. Sure enough: “My reflexes aren’t what they should be, I guess.” And then, quieter, “Usually it’s not anything that shatters. I caught a shard in the crossfire, that’s all.”

Without another word, his dad storms out the back door with coat and keys in hand. 

The oven dings, up to temperature. 

“Pizza?” It’s all Archie feels he has to offer. 

Jughead grins, “Always.” 

He slouches into a kitchen chair while Archie digs for a baking sheet to use, silent now and the smile sliding away. It’ll be a bit before the food is ready and Archie knows Jughead still feels like he’s imposing, so he grabs a bag of chips from the pantry and tosses it to him. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Archie honestly isn’t sure he is ready to hear about it, but he would never let it show, not when he knows he is one of the only people Jughead even _has_ to talk to. 

Jughead sighs. “I forgot my phone charger when I packed up yesterday and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of buying a new one. Wasn’t banking on FP actually being there and dealing with _that_ hassle.” 

In the silence afterward, Archie isn’t sure if he’ll go on or not. He shovels some chips into his mouth, signaling his choice. 

They wait awkwardly in silence, save for Jughead’s crunching. Archie is so desperate for something to do that he nearly grabs the pizza from the oven without a mitt. Fingers stinging, Archie changes the subject. 

“What do you think Reggie’s ‘quest’ will be?” 

This succeeds in altering the mood. Jug tries to smother a laugh. “I hope Betty was right and it’s something idiotic like streaking the field during the game.” That image has Archie laughing too, but it dies down when something occurs to him. 

“If it’s supposed to be equal weight to the truth option, it’s probably going to be something worse, right?” 

Jughead grabs a slice and hums in thought. “Fair. And theoretically life-ruining.” He pauses and then, “You guys don’t have recruiters at the game tomorrow, do you?” 

A lump forms in Archie’s throat. “We—we don’t usually know ahead of time. It’s technically late in the process for us, but not for any of the current juniors. But something drastic about a senior could get around quickly.” 

Carefully backtracking, Jughead tries to reassure him. “I’m just thinking out loud, Arch. And even so, Reggie pulling something stupid doesn’t reflect on you as a captain. You can only control them during the game and practice, it’s on their own heads outside of that.”

Still, it doesn’t make him feel much better. 

The only thing that does is a few hours later, when Veronica texts him. Along with pictures of his game day spirit box—full of snacks and cookies and what looks like some neon pink KT tape—she sends a selfie. His number is written on her cheek in something gold and glittery, maybe eyeliner. 

It makes his stomach flip flop and chest heat up the way it did earlier in her car. 

**_Practicing my art for tomorrow. Gotta rep my #1 player. And #1 kisser._ **

For good measure, she’s added a streak of lip print emojis. With a stealthy peach and eggplant tossed in the middle. 

This is uncharted territory for him. Is she trying to start ...something? Just flirting? He feels so out of his depth, but tries to follow his instinct. 

**_You’re my #1 Vixen._ **Is adding a heart emoji too much too soon? Is that weird to send as a guy? 

Archie wishes this were something he could walk down the hall to ask Jug, but he has a feeling he would either get an eyeroll or a blank stare in response. 

He forgoes the heart but includes the big grin smiley face. Veronica’s response comes in quickly, the kissing face emoji. This feels like too much coding so he, again, tries to follow instinct. **_Repeat of this afternoon before the first bell tomorrow?_ **

**_See you then, lover boy._ **

As he is considering a second—colder—shower, Archie hears Jug laughing next door. He’s glad to know his mood has improved, he must be reading something funny on reddit, which he’ll usually send Archie’s way as well. About to knock and ask what Jug’s found, he hears Jughead talking lightly in a low tone, practically a whisper by his standards since Jug has never been that quiet their whole lives. 

Hating the breach of privacy, but beyond curious, Archie tilts his ear to the space between the door and its frame. 

“You have to realize how absurd that opinion is, Betts, come on,” is what he parses out. 

He blinks. That’s... new. 

Not just talking on the phone—and _laughing_ —with Betty, but talking on the phone at all. Whenever Archie has tried to call Jug about something, he will send him to voicemail and then text something along the lines of **_you know phone calls are useless and annoying, what’s up?_ **

He tiptoes away, leaving Jug to his bizarre phone call. If it’s cheering him up then good for him. Odd as hell, but good for him. 

Archie mentions it to Veronica in the morning, once Jughead has gone into the building and he has slid into her far more comfortable reclining front seats. 

“What have we said,” Veronica murmurs, tongue swiping along his bottom lip, “about weird best friends being a buzzkill?” 

He might say something about the repeated use of _weird_ , but then again, Jug is a self-proclaimed weirdo, so... 

“I know, I know.” It’s hard to concentrate anyway with Veronica in her cheer skirt—a game day tradition—and the tantalizing strip of bare skin between the skirt and top for him to slide his hands up. And _his jersey number_ pencilled on her face. _God._ “Just wasn’t sure if Betty mentioned it to you at all.” 

She leans back a few inches and pats him lightly on the cheek. “It’s more what she _hasn’t_ said. But it’s a matter for another time, lover boy. We only have so—” she kisses his throat “—much—” his jaw “—time—” his lips “—now,” and slips her tongue in his mouth. Archie groans, moving his hands up and down her sides, inching closer to the clasp of her bra. 

When Veronica nods into the kiss, Archie pinches the band between his fingers. It takes more tries than he is willing to admit to get it open but Veronica is patient with him and thoroughly rewards him by guiding his palms to her freed breasts. 

Heady with the sensation of them in his hands, Archie squeezes. Veronica breaks away from his mouth and moans, arching her back and pressing even harder into his hold. The moan carries on until it overwhelms his system and Archie has to run game plays in his head to not embarrass himself. She isn’t making it easy on him, though, and she grinds down _hard_. She swallows his gasp but then Archie elicits one of her own by rolling one nipple between his fingers. 

They are a writhing mass of pleasure and the plays are turning to mush in his head. After a few more exchanges of breathy moans, Veronica takes pity and slows their pace. He knows it’s for the best but he still mourns the loss of pressure against his groin. In retaliation, Archie mouths down her neck and pinches both nipples. 

“ _Fuck_ , Archie.” 

He grins. “Soon.” 

He’s late to calculus. Jughead throws him a questioning glance before seeing what must be his obvious dishevelment and it turns into a deep eye roll. _Classic,_ he mouths. 

If it weren’t a landmine conversation, Archie might razz him back about his late night phone call—he could hear Jughead’s voice all the way until midnight. Instead, he flips him off. 

“Mr. Andrews, I know I didn’t just see what I thought I did on a Bulldogs game day, did I?” 

“No sir,” Archie answers, pasting on a huge grin (not that it’s too difficult a task after his morning). 

Beside him, Jughead scoffs. “Kiss-ass,” he mutters. 

“Jackass,” Archie shoots back. 

Mr. Jenkins levels them with a sharp look. Jughead begins writing something in his notebook and, sure enough, lifts it to show him. In his scratchy handwriting it reads, _jackass who tutors your sorry ass, so you’d better be nice._

Archie spends most of class only half-paying attention. The other half of his focus goes to Veronica’s bra, plays for the game later, and the fact that Jughead will almost certainly give him shit next time he has to ask for help on calc homework. 

And—despite the events of yesterday afternoon and their resulting injuries—Jughead’s curiously good mood. 

Lunch is buzzing with chatter, both about the game that night and about Reggie’s mysterious quest. Everyone seems excited to know what’s coming, if only to know how high or low the bar is for whoever’s next. Nobody seems all that concerned about there _being_ someone next. The air is tense, none of them bringing up either obvious topic: Reggie, or Jughead’s bruised face. 

“Fucking vultures,” Betty bursts out eventually, voice bitter. They all turn to her in surprise. “What, I’m allowed to say fuck, I’m not actually what my mother tries to make me. See? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck fuck.” 

Veronica whistles and bumps Betty with her shoulder. “Watch out, Riverdale.” 

Jughead busies himself with his food, ears looking a bit red, and Archie merely placates. “We know, Betty.”

“I’m mad that everyone is talking about it like Reggie’s throwing some party or whatever. This isn’t a game, no matter what the people behind it are pretending. People’s lives aren’t a game.” Her voice is quiet, but lethal. The humor of her swearing tirade dissipates and leaves them in an awkward silence. 

Jughead, in as kind a gesture as Archie has ever seen from him, tilts his open bag of chips toward her. She smiles but shakes her head. Archie watches in fascination as the pair has entire silent conversation: Jughead raises his eyebrows at her and proffers the bag again, Betty matches his expression then squints and seems to give in; she reaches for the bag and Jughead snatches it away; Betty then rolls her eyes and extends her hand, waiting, and Jughead shakes out a few into her palm. 

As Betty chews, Archie and Veronica exchange their own glance. 

Archie doesn’t have the same mindreading abilities, though, so he’s caught off guard when Veronica gets up from her position and plops down between him and Jughead and throws her _very_ bare legs over his lap. 

“Excuse me,” Jughead complains. 

Sugar sweet, Veronica answers. “You’re excused.” Jughead gets up, exasperated, and plunks himself in Veronica’s former seat. 

Archie leans down to whisper in her ear. “Subtle, baby.” He goes pink at how easily that _babe_ came out but if the way Veronica preens and attaches her mouth to his is anything to go by, she liked it a lot. 

Jughead makes a gagging noise across the table and Archie gives him the finger while kissing Veronica back. With tongue. 

It’s hard to concentrate the longer the day goes on, and his nerves over the game—and whether Reggie’s Sweetwater quest will affect it—are shot by the time the bell rings. 

There is still a whole three hours until the team needs to be on the field for warmups and Archie has absolutely no clue what to do with them. Preferably, he would pass the time in Veronica’s car again but when he shows up at her locker after the bell, his hopes are dashed. 

Veronica sticks her bottom lip out in a pout and Archie has to stop himself from leaning in and trapping it with his teeth. “Vixens have practice today still, or I would already be climbing you like a tree, baby.” She’s teasing him, but Archie does feel a bit self-conscious for how quickly he showed his hand with her. It’s just overwhelming, all these emotions bubbling to the surface. 

And yes—she is unfairly hot and from the last 48 hours alone he has enough physical memory of her ass to fulfill a lifetime of fantasies to get himself off. And the mutual attraction is there—given how Veronica keeps charging ahead to _help_ him get off. It’s sappy and perhaps over the top but she makes him feel light as air when they’re together. She is sweet and sassy and not afraid to tell anyone to fuck off and goes to great lengths to support people in her life. Archie knows she was one of Betty’s anchors in the spring and nothing inspires admiration in Archie than loyalty to his loved ones. 

“Walk me to the gym?” Veronica asks, almost shy. Archie has to wonder if she also feels insecure as to whether they’re both more into fooling around with each other than anything _more_. 

He isn’t good with his words, not like Jughead is, so he does his best to signal his sincerity in other ways. Carefully, Archie swoops in to press a kiss to Veronica’s cheek without smudging her makeup— _his_ number—and then gestures that she hand him her backpack and cheer bag. 

“Of course, Ronnie.” 

The lead up to the game is stressful. In the locker room, Reggie is playing coy at his dare and it’s obvious enough that something is going on for Coach Clayton to pull Archie aside before warm-ups. 

“Anything I need to know, Andrews?” 

Archie shakes his head. “Everyone is a bit wound up from the, uh, rumor mill—” he’s not sure how clued in the adults at RHS are so he tries to stay vague, “—but there’s nothing that I know of.” 

His coach nods, brow furrowed slightly, but rounds them up and out to the field without comment. 

The game goes about as well as it can for the first half; they are evenly matched with Greendale but are up by a few points come halftime. As Coach huddles them up for the strategy regroup, Archie manages to keep an eye out for Veronica in the Vixens’ halftime performance. 

Mildly distracted by her legs and that skirt and her legs _and_ her skirt in his lap that morning, Archie guzzles down one of the Gatorades from his spirit box. She winks at him from the field and he feels bolstered. 

They maintain their small lead through the fourth quarter and he’s feeling good. Things come crashing down around them all come a time out with 2:02 on the clock. Out of nowhere, Reggie peels away from their team and charges hard at a Greendale player down the field. With the element of surprise on his side, the Greendale guy is knocked to the ground and can’t fight back against Reggie’s punches. 

Whistles blow and the refs have to manhandle Reggie away, but Archie can’t see where they take him. Both sides are distracted and there is an unspoken agreement to run the clock out. Archie is grateful, considering the retaliation that could have come their way. 

He shakes hands with their captain and apologizes. “You guys didn’t deserve that,” Archie says. “That should have never happened. I’m very sorry.” The other guy nods curtly and they part ways.

When they traipse back into the locker room, Archie is ready to throw punches himself. 

“What the _fuck,_ Reggie,” he shouts. 

Chuck Clayton grabs him by the elbow to hold him back. “Dude, not worth it. We can’t have you suspended, too.” Archie is seething but relents. Chuck still hangs on to him, which is probably for the best. 

To his extremely minimal credit, Reggie looks chastised. “That was my dare, man. Get myself suspended from the team.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Chuck groans. “You couldn’t have just ditched for a week or flunked a couple things like a normal person?”

“Had to be by this weekend.” Reggie shrugs. “Come on, we all know I’m only playing club ball at best next year. I’ll be fine.” 

“You won’t be fine,” Archie snaps, “When I kick your stupid ass across the field.” Again, Chuck yanks him back a few inches. 

Trev Brown even joins the non-fray with his quiet, calm demeanor. “Archie, let Coach deal with him. Like Chuck said, it’s not worth it.” 

Sure enough, Coach Clayton comes bursting into the room. “Mantle. My office. Now. The rest of you shower up and go home.” There’s an awkward, pregnant pause. “ _Now._ ” They all scatter, most of them opting to just strip off the gear and get the hell out, to shower at home. 

Archie sinks on to the bench and watches the forceful close of Coach’s office door. After a few minutes, Chuck pops back in. “Andrews, your girl is waiting for you. Just walk it off and go home, man. We’ll deal later.” 

His heartbeat skips at _your girl._ Is she? God, he hopes so. Given the fact that she barrels into him as he exits, disgusting sweat be damned, he thinks they’re on the same page. As she wraps her arms around him and he lets himself relax into the embrace, Archie suddenly feels bone tired. When she eventually lets go, her glitter number is smudged and a flash of something—an animal thing, something that says _mine_ —goes through him, he fights the exhaustion with the desire to haul her up and press her against the gym wall and do whatever she’ll let him. 

Everything, hopefully. 

Something in his eyes must give him away because Veronica places a palm on his chest. “We’ve got an audience, baby.” 

Across the gym, looking hesitant and incensed, respectively, are Jughead and Betty. Jug gives him a two-finger salute and makes an apologetic face. Betty starts to stalk over, but Jughead holds her back, saying something in her ear. She stays put until he and Veronica cross the distance. 

“Let me guess,” Betty says wryly. “Sweetwater quest?” 

Archie nods. 

“Fuck.” 

* * *

Veronica wakes up from a _very_ good dream to her phone buzzing with messages. She supposes it’s her own fault for starting a group message with Archie, Betty, and Jughead. Betty is a laughably early riser and the string of messages are all from her. Archie sent a few the night before. Jughead, predictably, is silent. 

She mutes her phone and closes her eyes again, desperate to return to the dream where Archie _had_ pushed her up against the gym walls like he seemed to want to yesterday. In the dream, he had undone her bra again—sports bras have no place in dreams—and peeled off her spandex shorts and was very enthusiastically exploring what they revealed. With his tongue. 

In reality, Veronica is mildly overheated under the cool cotton of her sheets and pressing her thighs together for any amount of relief. 

There is none to be found. 

She strains her ears for any sign of life outside her room; Manuela stays back in the city with her sister on the weekends and it’s definitely too early for Hermione to be up. It’s quiet enough that she can assume her dad is at the gym. 

Dispelling those people from her mind, Veronica calls back the heated way Archie looked at her yesterday and the way he ground her down on his lap in the car and his warm hands palming her breasts and—

She slides her fingers underneath her sleep shorts, sighing softly at the tension that ebbs just slightly from the pressure she gives herself. It isn’t quite enough and while she is tempted to dig into the back of her lingerie drawer for her bullet vibrator, she also wants to drag out this fantasy. 

It’s _Archie’s_ calloused fingers stroking lightly over damp cotton, _Archie_ pinching her nipple, _Archie_ biting down on her lip, Archie and his abs she wants to lick chocolate off and his chiseled jaw she wants digging into her upper thigh. Archie nosing down her loose shirt, sucking hard at her breasts, one hand holding her hips steady while the other teases at her before slipping inside and rubbing, kissing across her stomach and nipping at her hip bone and ever-so-lightly tonguing at her—

“Fuck, _fuck,”_ Veronica moans, easing her self down with softer touches and inhaling deeply. _Dios_ , she thinks, fingers still shaking against her own heated skin. 

She is not one for nudes—tasteful boudoir notwithstanding—and is obviously hyper-aware of something nefarious in the Riverdale virtual cloud. That said, Veronica does reach for her phone to take a semi-posed selfie: mussed hair, flushed face and neck, and tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth. 

**_Thinking of you this morning_ ** **,** she taps out. She takes a few moments to curate her emojis and settles on the kiss smiley, lipstick print, and shooting star. That should hopefully get the message across. 

It’s early still so she can _more_ than get away with languishing in bed for a while. Her thoughts even drift back to her drawer, wondering if she might start building up her stamina; Archie’s enthusiasm from this week alone tells Veronica she is in for a rollercoaster of passion that seems to only go up. 

Her body is responding in kind, though. It’s been ages since she’s woken up from a dream so raunchy that she immediately needed to get herself off. Probably not since her freshman spring semester fling with Cricket O’Dell, a gymnast to her cheering, and they’d spent the entire two week spring break holed up in the Lodge townhouse, exploring each other with the raw energy that only teenagers with a first taste of sexual freedom can have. 

Cricket had been most of her firsts and Veronica never expected so many firsts to be firsts _with a girl._ She figured out pretty quickly that she felt the same kind of heat and had the same kinds of crushes on both boys and girls. Fletcher Foley was her first kiss in the seventh grade, Alexander Cabot her first sloppy party makeout, but Cricket was her first for everything else. 

In the interim, there have been a couple other girls and guys—she likes to kiss when she’s tipsy, what can she say—but none of them have made her swoon quite like Archie Andrews. 

She ultimately decides to drag herself from bed and into some workout leggings. There’s a much-hated weekend practice later so she doesn’t want to push herself too hard, but a short yoga video stretches out where she’s sore from cheering the night before and helps to settle her mind a bit. 

Still no sign of life out in the kitchen, so Veronica texts Betty—separately—to ask if she wants to go to Pop’s for brunch.

**_Ugh I wish. Alice is ….being Alice this morning. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get out of here at all today._ **

Veronica sends distraught emojis in response, plus prayer hands and crossed fingers for good luck. 

She supposes she could call up Archie to go to Pop’s but at the same time, that would be a lot of back to back days with spend with a brand new beau. Abuelita’s advice rings in her ear, _Never let a man become your whole being._ While there’s a long way to go from this honeymoon period to Archie becoming her entire life, Veronica could use the space to clear her brain of its horny fog, at the very least. 

She will save the waffles she’s craving for tomorrow, when she can jailbreak Betty and they can girl-talk over whipped cream and berries. Asking your best friend how she feels about you dating her _other_ best friend is a conversation best saved for a time when parental tempers aren’t running high. 

They haven’t DTR’d yet but anybody with eyes could define this as dating, even if the _are we boyfriend and girlfriend_ conversation hasn’t happened yet. And Veronica definitely wants to make sure Betty is comfortable with her two best friends dating. 

Though, ostensibly, Betty’s plate might be too full to even weigh those pros and cons. She is neck deep in her mission to take down Sweetwater Secrets—and is in even deeper denial that there is any spark between her and Jones. 

Anybody with eyes could _also_ see that those two idiots are handling some nuclear-level sexual tension. 

It’ll happen when it happens, Veronica supposes. But that doesn’t mean she won’t tease the hell out of her best friend over it. And Jones, too, for that matter, because he is more than capable of dishing it right back out to her. It’s almost _fun_ to deliberately rile him up. 

Speaking of riled up… Archie is awake and answering her message rather incoherently. 

**_christ ronnie_ **

**_oh my GOD_ **

**_youre going to have me taking extra long showers like im 14 again_ **

Veronica smiles to herself while pulling a carton of eggs from the fridge, debating an omelet versus sunny side up. When she unlocks her phone, she tries to find the best lighting in the kitchen and takes another photo, one that shows off that she only wore a sports bra to work out. 

**_One more for the road, then_ **

Archie answers almost immediately. **_you do not want to see my bedhead but trust me when I say that I am DEFINITELY thinking of you right now_ **

The mere thought of Archie getting off to a photo of her after _she_ got off to a daydream of him is almost too much. If she hadn’t already cracked two eggs into the sizzling pan, Veronica would march right back into her room to keep going. 

**_Enjoy that shower, Archiekins!_ **She signs it with a kiss and turns to the stove, fanning herself. 

_Get a grip, Lodge_ , she sighs. _You cannot be a sentient ball of hormones today, you have shit to do._

She is just dipping the last of her toast into yolk when her mother finally emerges.

“Morning, mija,” she says, dropping a kiss to the crown of your head. “Cafe con leche?”

Veronica shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure when you would be up, so I only made enough for one. I can make some more if you want.” Something resembling panic rattles around her ribcage. She hadn’t thought to do this. It’s been her unofficial job to keep things as smooth as possible at home—nothing amiss means nothing to complain about, which means both of her parents have no reason to rock the boat. 

She is waved off. “I’ll get something on the way to work, mija, you’re okay.”

_Am I though,_ she has to wonder. Panicking over what might happen because she didn’t make coffee for her mother on a Saturday morning is not _okay._

Smooth sailing is the name of the game and Veronica has been steering since the day her father came home with FBI agents trailing behind him. _He_ wasn’t being arrested—yet—but his business partner Mr. St. Claire had been. He embezzled from their financial consulting firm and tried to make it to the Caribbean before Hiram figured it out.

Unfortunately for both of them, the FBI beat them to it.

Nearly everything they had was either tied up in the investigation into St. Claire, or had been funneled into one of his accounts they hadn’t found yet. Everything except Veronica’s college and trust funds, which were only in Veronica and Hermione’s names.

It didn’t take long to get over herself and realize that everything she had grown accustomed to was gone and never coming back. As soon as she heard the words _let Manuela go_ and _divorce_ thrown around behind closed doors, Veronica called a family meeting. Use her trust fund to pay legal fees and Manuela’s salary. Manuela had been with them since Veronica was a baby and there was no way she would let anything happen to her, designer labels and Spence be damned. Take half her college fund to move them back to her parents’ hometown and get settled; there are perfectly acceptable state schools.

Veronica is the fixer and she fixed their shattered family.

The cracks were starting to show again, though, and so she moves silently within the apartment; no requests to come see her cheer, straight As, no partying, no _anything_ ; keep things running on the weekends while Manuela sees her family. Make her mother’s goddamn cafe con leche on Saturdays before she goes to work.

And she forgot because she was distracted by a boy. (A very hot, handsome boy who gives her butterflies, but _still._ )

Hermione has moved beyond Pop’s waitress (Cheryl Blossom’s favorite thing to mock Veronica about last year) and over to sales associate at an upscale jewelry store in Greendale. They were all making it work. She even used her employee discount to get Veronica pearl earrings for her birthday this summer.

And yet the guilt still hangs over her head like a looming storm.

Even with the apartment to herself (her father has yet to appear and she is choosing to not think too hard about that fact), Veronica has a hard time focusing on her homework. There’s an AP Lit essay on _Beloved_ she needs to start outlining but she knows her best bet is to wait until she can work with Betty on that because she understood the book _far_ better than the rest of them.

French is easy in theory but her brain just will not conjugate anything properly. Not for the first time, Veronica bemoans her choice to _challenge herself_ and take a language class she wasn’t already halfway fluent in. She's good at French, to be sure, but she’d kill to have something mindless instead. 

She burns away some time checking up on her former Spence bffs, all of whom haven’t changed one whit and were apparently partying at clubs on a Tuesday night. Those escapades were fun while they lasted, she won’t lie. But she is grateful to have a traditional high school experience, with friends who do care about their homework in addition to having fun. 

Not that Veronica would necessarily qualify Betty fulfilling her vendetta against a gossip app fun. It’s not _not_ fun, though. 

She is curious to know how things are going for herself and as she’s getting ready to leave for Vixens practice, she decides she’ll swing into the school building after and see if the sanctum sanctorum is unlocked. She doubts it will be, knowing Betty. And knowing _Jughead_ for that matter. (Her calc notebook is in her locker anyway, so it won’t be a fruitless trip even if she can’t get in.)

Trula is in a mood when she arrives on the field, barking at all of them to start running laps. Saturday practices are the worst not only for being the weekends, but also because they’re captain-lead. Coach Appleyard believes in team bonding and leadership, so twice a week Trula kicks their asses in a more mean-spirited way. 

Given the oversized sunglasses she’s sporting and water bottle she’s clutching, Trula is likely hungover. 

That Veronica doesn’t even know who hosted a party last night is a welcome relief. With the whole school buzzing about Sweetwater and guessing who will be outed for what, especially after Reggie’s stunt yesterday, she has to imagine that a crowded party would only serve as fodder for whoever has that target on their back next. 

Blowing off some steam, non-sexually, does sound fun though. Maybe Veronica can convince Betty to come over for a spiked seltzer and pedicure night soon. If she weren’t under Alice Cooper lockdown, she would drag her off Elm Street tonight. 

It has been her _dream_ to convince Betty Cooper to sneak out of her house, ever since they met last year. It’s something she is determined to make happen before they graduate in the spring. 

Trula seems to lose steam the longer they go on, and it appears that a good half of the rest of the team is in varying states of feeling ill so she calls it after 40 minutes. Veronica scoffs to herself but can’t complain, not when this means she can go home that much earlier. Maybe take a hot bath to preempt any soreness, see if her mom is in a good enough mood after work to open a nicer bottle of wine and let her have a glass… maybe text Archie some more. Or pay a visit to Archie, if she might be so lucky. 

But first—her notebook and perhaps a peek into the newspaper office of sexual tension. 

_Those two,_ she shakes her head. 

The door is more than unlocked when she makes it down the hallway, there’s a goddamned light on. Veronica figures it is Jughead and though she finds him mildly exhausting it might be a good opportunity to suss out just how head over heels he is for her best friend. 

What she walks into is perhaps even more startling to her than her interruption is to the room’s occupants. 

Jughead _and_ Betty. 

They’re not exactly that close to each other, or in any compromising position—Betty sitting on top of the big desk facing their murderboard-esque timeline and Jughead leaning back against the same desk, several feet to the right of her—but they still fly apart from each other. Betty practically falls over in her efforts to get off the table, prompting Jughead to move closer and take hold of her upper arm to steady her. 

Veronica rolls her eyes. 

“Veronica,” Betty says, gasping and clutching at her chest. “You just scared the fuck out of me, what the hell are you doing here?” She has to say, she’s really enjoying Betty cutting loose enough to swear so much. It is also a great indicator of when she’s defensive. 

Pursing her lips, Veronica narrows her eyes and waves her cheer bag in explanation. “I had practice and came to grab a notebook, then wanted to take a look at how this all,” she waves her hand in the direction of the board, “was going.” Betty nods, though she still looks guilty and out of sorts. “More importantly, what are _you_ doing here? How’d you escape the dragon?” 

Veronica doesn’t think Betty would have ever lied to her on something so inconsequential as a diner brunch, but then again, Betty also has never been so off balance by a boy’s presence in her life. 

“Some big scoop for a piece she’s working on popped up and she left for Elmdale for the rest of the day.” 

“And you’re ...here? At school?” 

Veronica raises an eyebrow at Betty before pointedly looking at Jughead and making a small but effective crude gesture. Betty goes bright red and Veronica isn’t sure how much Jughead may have seen but it was enough that he is quickly turning to stare at the crazed crime board. He fidgets with the hem of his ratty old hat and Veronica smirks, glad she’s succeeded in, for once, shutting him up. 

“The board is here,” Betty defends, her voice strained. 

Veronica hums. “Mmm- _hm._ ” 

Jones speaks up, finally, still fidgeting but looking far more composed than Betty. _Boy’s got a solid game face,_ she thinks. “Was there something you needed to add to the timeline, Lodge?” 

“Not really,” she says. She turns to the board, both to let the pair of them gather their wits and to drink it all in. They seemed to have worked backwards starting from this past week, mapping out all the notification blasts and the date that information corresponds to. Betty’s meticulous hand writing fills up most of their sheets, which look as though they’ve been rearranged to wrap down the wall instead of across, but sees a messy scrawl pick up in the spring—on Polly’s leak, then a date a few weeks before labelled with _PC & BC at clinic _. 

Veronica feels a rush of gratitude toward the grouch. For however much fun it is to tease him about the _obvious_ crush on Betty, he also cares enough to be aware of her feelings. Polly and her backlash is not something Betty talks about, even with her, so if Betty has felt comfortable enough to open up to Jughead, however little, then Veronica has to respect that. 

“I really was just curious how it was going.” She turns to Betty, remembering suddenly. “I’ll do that social media digging to see where any of the cattier Spence girls overlap with people here.”

“Thank you, V,” Betty answers. 

“That will be a crucial puzzle piece if you are able to find something. Thanks.” Jughead says it begrudgingly and Veronica has to suppress the instinct to snark at him. They’re all on the same team for this, after all. And also decidedly on Team Betty. 

“I’ll leave you to it.” She says it in earnest, despite how much she wants to make another innuendo. If they’re not going to jump each other’s bones, then at least they’re working on something helpful to them all. 

  
  
  
  


Veronica does take an Epsom bath when she gets home, but her mom texts that she has _things to do_ after work, so her afternoon of luxury is soured. 

She is significantly cheered up when Archie shyly texts her a voice memo of the chord progression for a song he’s working on. It’s followed by the update that he’s going to help his dad out at the office for a while so if he doesn’t answer her texts, that’s why. 

She lays across her bed, staring at the ceiling and pouting. Logically, she knows that not every weekend will create memories to be cherished in the future, but senior year has her sappy and Veronica really wants to make this time count. 

Moping isn’t going to help, she knows, and she needs to get out of the house. 

She crosses her fingers as she taps out a message to Betty, asking if Alice is still gone and if she wants to go to Pop’s. 

An immediate answer: **_God, yes, I’ve been craving waffles since you texted this morning and Alice is on yet another anti-carbs streak so the fridge is depressing. Pick me up in 20?_ **

Knowing Betty would much rather get the hell out of her house, even empty as it is, Veronica gets there in 10. She knows her best friend well, she thinks in satisfaction, when Betty is already sitting on the front steps waiting. She’s in the passenger seat in a flash and throws her a grateful look. Veronica waits until she’s blown out a heavy breath and humming to the Carly Rae song on the radio before going in for the kill. 

“So Archie tells me you and Jughead are staying on the phone pretty late, B. And you two seemed awfully cozy earlier.” 

Betty startles, evidently surprised that she knows about the phone call detail. She cuts her with a sideway glance. “We’re not having this conversation, V. Jug and I are just spending a ton of time on the Sweetwater investigation.” 

“Uh huh.” Veronica grins. “I think _Jug_ would rather spend all that time investigating _you,_ if you catch my drift.” 

“Trust me, the drift is caught,” Betty grumbles. “It’s not like that.” 

There’s something in her tone that makes Veronica think Betty does, in fact, want it to be like that. It feels good to have her hunch confirmed. 

“Just saying,” she singsongs, “I’m sure a couple good makeouts in the back parking lot and rubbing one out could do wonders for your stress levels, B. As of this morning, I can absolutely vouch for that.” 

“God, please do not give me details about your newfound sex life with Archie. Seeing you makeout at lunch yesterday was plenty.” 

Veronica doesn’t miss the way Betty’s neck flushes at the insinuation and can’t help but wonder if she’s crafting her own fantasy, a floppy-haired one, to take care of things in bed. 

Not wanting to put her on the spot for too long, Veronica cuts Betty some slack and turns up the music. By the time they’re pulling into the Pop’s parking lot, Betty seems to have gathered her wits again. At least until they’ve slid into a corner booth and her phone vibrates on the tabletop. The speed with which Betty flips it facedown tells Veronica all she needs to know. 

(Though she would _love_ to know what Jughead is saved as in her phone. _Jughead? Jug? Jug with a crown emoji?_ Endless possibilities. Maybe Veronica can do what she did with Archie and sneak a change. Not yet, though. Once they get over themselves and kiss, though, all bets are off. She’ll let them hem and haw for now.) 

“Go ahead and answer him,” Veronica says with a wave of her hand. “You and I both know you want to.” 

Betty gnaws on her bottom lip and then slides her phone toward her, hiding it in her lap to respond. 

_Okay one more tease_ , she grants herself. “The more you try to hide your screen the more I’m going to think that you and beanie boy are sexting, B. Are you sure that black eye isn’t from your thighs?” 

Betty tosses a sugar packet at her face. “We are _not,_ knock it off.” Veronica raises her hands in surrender. 

“Regale me with what you two have sussed out, then. I actually am dying to know who this gossip cretin is.” 

Betty’s shoulders relax a few inches, obviously grateful for the change in topic. “So, Juggie—” she bites her lip again, flushing, “— _Jughead_ figured out that the app actually forced an update without anybody noticing, in order to add a messaging system. That’s how you’re supposed to answer with truth or quest.” 

“I did wonder how that worked with Reggie,” Veronica hums. 

“And that’s obviously a big technical change, meaning whoever is currently behind it, even if it’s been handed down like Archie suggested, is good at coding. Or knows someone good at coding who would keep their mouth shut.”

When their server comes to take their orders, they both fall silent on the matter. It stays that way for a while afterwards and Veronica can see Betty’s argument with herself on whether she’ll say what she’s about it. 

“Oh my god, B, out with it already before you burst a blood vessel.” 

“I’m just—” now she starts to fiddle with the sugar packets and Veronica is beginning to worry “—I feel like I need to give you _and_ Archie both the _don’t you dare hurt my best friend_ speech and I haven’t been sure who to start with.” 

It is so comically underwhelming in light of the things going on that Veronica snorts with laughter. “Oh Bettykins, honestly, that’s what you’re worried about?” 

Betty looks troubled still, and nods. “I mean, I can tell you both really like each other and that you wouldn’t break each other’s hearts on purpose, but… _if_ it did happen, and I’m not saying it ever would, I don’t want to lose either of you. And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.” 

Veronica relocates to the opposite bench and squeezes her in a hug. “Please don’t worry. You’re stuck with us like barnacles. Archie and I have been together for all of two seconds, and I think it’s gonna be amazing. You can’t think about the worst way something could end before it’s even started. That’s no way to live.” 

Maybe she is laying it on a bit thick for other reasons, but Veronica does believe this deep in her core. If there’s anything she has learned from the dissolution of her former life, it’s to enjoy the things that make you happy without regret. 

Betty’s ponytail bobs as she nods and Veronica can see her mull over the words. 

“And you’re happy?” 

With a cheshire cat smile, Veronica drawls her answer. “Oh darling, I am _very_ happy.” 

  
  
  
  


Under the guise of studying with Betty, Veronica spends Sunday studying—well, _not_ studying—with Archie. He looks so excited to see her when he opens the door that she barely takes the time to ask if he’s home alone before looping her arms around his neck and jumping into his hold. 

“Just us,” he mumbles into her mouth, hands firmly holding her up by her ass. 

That he is able to carry her up the stairs while kissing her, without stumbling once, only serves to turn her on even more. 

His bedroom is cozy and boyish in an endearing way—deep plaid bedding, a few crumpled movie posters, various trophies and team photos with little Archies of all ages—and the way his desk has a stack of binders and his pillows are fluffed, she can tell he straightened up for her. 

When he deposits her on the bed with a slight bounce, face flushed and excited, Veronica’s stomach swoops at how handsome he looks. He hurries to shut the door behind them so she unzips her boots to kick them off, ditches her coat, and scoots back up to those carefully arranged pillows. Archie looks a bit dazed to see her top, a blue gauzy, sheer blouse with the buttons undone just low enough to see the lace of her bra. 

“God,” he gulps. “You’re so gorgeous, Ronnie.” 

“Not so bad yourself, baby,” she purrs. “Now come over here.” She beckons him with a crook of her finger and he trips a bit in his movement. 

With one knee on the bed, braced to move fully over her, he pauses. “Whatever speed you want, okay? I’ll follow your lead.” 

It’s something Veronica implicitly knew Archie would do, just from how he acts, but it wipes away a small blip of anxiety she hadn’t known was there to hear him say it aloud. She has matching lingerie on and an emergency condom in the inner pocket of her coat, but she also told herself that she shouldn’t rush to that. Veronica isn’t actually sure how far she wants to go on what is technically day five of this relationship—she does, though, like to be prepared. 

(The silly Trojan jingle from the youtube video ad that her mom showed her as step one of The Talk echoes in her head.) 

“Let’s see where this takes us,” she tells him. 

And then his solid frame is slotted between her thighs so he can capture her lips, bracing his weight on one elbow to play with the buttons of her shirt with the other hand. Speed be damned, Veronica scratches her fingers up the back of his shirt and tugs. They tangle a bit to get it off and then she feels dazed herself, drinking in his firm chest and the light definition of his abs, letting her fingers lead her gaze. They take her down to the button of his jeans, where she can see just how happy he is to see her. 

Using that leverage to yank his hips flush with hers, Veronica presses upward in search of that delicious pressure. Archie swears and then dips down to kiss the exposed skin of her chest, fingers getting clumsy on her buttons. She takes pity and undoes the rest herself, then shivers when his warm palms spread out over her sides. One sneaks up her back to unclasp her bra—a bit quicker this time than in the car—and then his mouth is hot breathing over one nipple, with his hand rolling the other between his fingers.

The sensation is overwhelming and Veronica feels useless, only able to run her hands up and around his shoulders to scratch at the hair of his neck. “I can’t reach you.” It surprises her how needy her voice sounds. 

Archie pauses to look up. “You first,” he says with a wink before dipping back down to lick her nipple. 

She keens and he keeps going, moving between both breasts until she is so turned on she can’t breathe. He must sense how much her body needs more, and one hand traces the zipper of her skirt in question. “Yeah?” he whispers. 

Unable to find words yet, she just nods emphatically. The release of the zipper allows more space to move and Archie takes full advantage by reaching down to squeeze her ass again then shoving the fabric up her waist a bit so he has more room to move to where her lace underwear is warm and unbearably in need of friction. 

“Arch?” The hand freezes and she practically whines. “Oh, god, no keep going, just. Um,” she feels shy all of the sudden, despite where his hands and mouth are. “Kiss me?” 

His worried brow smooths out as he surges forward to kiss her. With his mouth and hand in tandem, Veronica loses herself to the feeling until she’s falling, falling, falling. He swallows her shockingly loud moan and slows his fingers to ease her down. She exhales, a little shaky, when he pulls back to look at her. He has the good graces to at least _try_ to hide how smug he feels. 

“Oh, go on,” she says, voice still strangled. “Gloat. You deserve it.” 

Archie’s smirk is adorable. 

“Your turn now.” 

His smirk turns into a grin and he kisses her fiercely. “It’s okay, Ronnie, I’m good.” 

She sneaks her hand to where he is decidedly _not_ fine, and tells him so. “Archie,” she coos, bringing her hand to her mouth quickly to lick her palm. Archie groans at the movement and then she undoing his zipper and slipping beneath the elastic of his boxers, “The least I can do for you after that orgasm is to put my hand on your co—” 

His tongue in her mouth silences her until his forehead drops to her chest and he’s gasping in please. The sound spurs her on and then it’s her turn to kiss him through the sensations. 

  
  
  
  


It’s cute how sheepish he is when Archie directs her to the hall bathroom after she asks to wash up. The Veronica she sees in the mirror as she washes her hands and straightens out her skirt is sated and glowing—and _happy._

Archie is lounging on his bed in fresh boxers and she follows the instinct to curl up right under his arm. 

It’s then that they both notice buzzing phones, Veronica’s particularly loud and insistent. Someone is calling her. 

Someone is calling her _again_ , based on her home screen. It’s Betty. 

“Betty, hi, what’s wrong?” 

“Sweetwater again, where _are_ you?” 

Veronica gets up to go over to the window. As she guessed, Betty is pacing around her bedroom across the lawn. “Look out the window.” Betty turns and Veronica waves. 

“Oh, god,” Betty groans. 

At the same time, footsteps clomp up the stairs. “Hey, Arch, another blast and—” Jughead appears at the doorway. “Ah, fuck, gross.” 

Veronica flips him off without even turning around. She can practically hear the eye roll over the phone. “Well since you’re all _there_ already,” she sighs. 

They all sit awkwardly around the kitchen table, Veronica on one side with Archie opposite the hilarious sight that is Betty’s amusement and Jughead’s thinly veiled disgust next to each other. 

Betty starts her explanation. “So this timeline is new. Ginger must have picked truth immediately, because the truth follow up came like half an hour later.” 

“That or she just told them to go fuck themselves,” Jughead says. 

At Ginger’s name, Veronica goes stock still. It’s then that she finally opens her notifications, calling out Ginger Lopez for truth or quest. And then very shortly after:

**Tsk, tsk, Miss Lopez. Exhibitionism isn’t a great look, especially not when it’s a sloppy one. We thought girl on girl hookups were supposed to be hot.**

Attached to the message are blurry photos of who is unmistakably Ginger—the fire truck red dyed curls are hard to miss—pressed up against another girl, in the dark driveway outside of a house party. 

All that is visible of the other girl is her skirt and heels, but it doesn’t matter. Veronica knows exactly who those heels belong to because they’re sitting in her closet at home. 

  
  


* * *

On her nightly— _nightly!—_ phone call with Jughead, Betty walks circles around her room as they brainstorm. Underneath the fury of this latest ‘truth,’ she worries about Veronica, who seemed very unsettled by the ordeal and bailed not long after their conversation fell into frustrated silence. Underneath that still, is her unspoken concern for that cut on Jughead’s face that he refuses to talk about. 

_“_ Betty stop stress-pacing, you’ll wear a hole in that pink carpet of yours.” 

_“_ How do you know I’m stress-pacing,” she asks, disgruntled. “Or that my carpet is pink?” 

_“_ Took a stab in the dark on the carpet. And I can see you walking in circles through the window.” Jughead sounds sheepish as he admits the latter, mumbling an apology. “That’s probably a touch too weird, even for the weirdo.” 

She pads over to her window seat and climbs up on her knees. Sitting back on her heels, Betty scans for the lighted guest room window and catches Jughead’s profile. “I’m waving at you, so now we’re even,” she says. She isn’t weirded out by it, even if she is supposed to be. Though she does wish she were wearing something other than an ancient, oversized Riverdale Register tshirt and shorts. 

Why does she _care,_ this is Jughead. 

(It would certainly make things weird to change now, wouldn’t it? It would, it really would. Just like it is certainly weird that she kind of wants him to see her in something that isn’t her everyday schoolwear or shapeless.) 

Then again— 

Jughead swallows hard across the line, “Do you not have pants on?” 

Thank god he can’t see how flustered she looks. He probably hears it, though. “Oh, god, no, no I have shorts on, see?” _Like an idiot,_ Betty lifts up the hem to show the—apparently very short—shorts. “They have penguins on them. They’re technically my Christmas pajamas so I’m very out of season but I didn’t do laundry this weekend, so...” she trails off, hyper-aware of her rambling and of the fact that she still holds up her shirt, now far higher than the waistband of the shorts without how jittery she feels. She drops it and does a 180, too embarrassed to face him, however many feet the distance between windows may be. 

Except now her _ass_ faces him and it looks like she did it on purpose and _ohmygodhelp_. She dives for the bed, face down into her pillow in shame and phone bouncing a safe distance away. 

Betty can hear the faint _are you still there?_ from him and she considers hanging up. 

The Veronica-like voice in her head says that, well, it’s not like he sounded disgusted by your theoretical lack of pants. And then Veronica’s real words echo in her mind, _I think Jug would rather spend all that time investigating you._

Feeling emboldened, Betty returns to the window seat. This time she puts her back to the wall so she at least isn’t staring directly at him. 

“Um,” Jughead says. “You okay?” Is his voice catching, or is she losing her mind? 

“Fine.” Her voice comes out in a squeak, an unmistakable tell. 

Silence settles between them and all Betty can hear is the frantic beat of her own heart. 

“Movie?” Jughead finally suggests. 

Mercifully, her voice is even when she answers. “Your pick tonight, right?” 

They have fallen into a _pattern._ They _trade off picking movies._ They trade off picking movies that _they stay on the phone and watch together until one of them falls asleep._

Once again, Veronica’s words echo. _You can’t think about the worst way something could end before it’s even started. That’s no way to live_.

“We should make a list.” 

“A list of what?” Jughead asks. 

“Of movies. That we want the other to watch. And we can watch them together, cross them off the list.” It’s as forward as Betty can stomach right now, just to imply that they’ll be doing this _whatever it is_ long enough to work their way through a movie list. 

He is the one to ask the lingering question. “On the phone together, or...?” Jughead sounds nervous, like he is afraid of her answer. Only Betty can’t tell which scenario and she shrinks back. 

“Nevermind,” she rushes to say. “There’s more important stuff going on anyway. Which, um, you know what, that reminds me I didn’t finish the chapters of Beloved for class tomorrow so I should probably do that instead. I’m sorry, goodnight!” 

Betty launches herself away from the window, but lands on the floor when she trips over the edge of the stupid pink carpet. 

“God damn it,” she moans. She hangs her head in her hands and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing herself not to cry. 

It also serves as a physical defense from digging her nails in. Betty has been fighting that impulse all week, ever since Jughead’s name had popped up on that stupid app—and especially since her mother went full mommy dearest on her. 

These movie night phone calls with Jughead are becoming near-sacred, something to look forward to at the end of each nightmarish day. It’s something Betty can’t explain— _couldn’t_ , even when Veronica asked her. 

Everything overwhelms her lately and, more than anything, she wants her older sister’s shoulder to cry on. But she can’t go to Polly, not about this. 

Her phone buzzes and Betty looks at it as though it’s an animal poised to attack. Another buzz. And another. It’s not ringing, so it’s not Jughead calling her back. He is probably shaking his head over her complete inability to function and the thought makes her eyes well up again. 

One more buzz. 

**_you and I both know you’ve read beloved twice before we were assigned it in class_ **

**_I know shit is wild right now and it’s a lot, so I get it_ **

**_I’m going to watch kill bill_ **

**_you can call if you still want to_ **

  
  
  
  


In the end, Betty does call him back. But not before taking a shower to clear her head and then putting on long sweatpants and wrapping herself in a blanket, as if looking as decidedly unsexy as possible would retroactively undo her embarrassment. 

It doesn’t.

They carry on as though nothing happened, for which Betty is immensely grateful. 

They stay on the phone long after the credits roll, talking about whatever comes up: film noir, Sweetwater, tasks they need to complete for the _Blue & Gold _, making absurd lists of all the ways Archie might try to impress Veronica, tentative thoughts about where they might be next year. 

(“I’m applying early to Northwestern, I think. Hopefully knowing that I want to do journalism will offset my mom’s crushed Ivy Mother dreams.” 

“I’m editing portfolios to submit to Tisch and Iowa. It scares the shit out of me to put all my eggs in a very unreliable artist career basket.” 

“I could look at it, if you wanted.” 

“That would be nice.”)

Earlier freakout notwithstanding, Jughead makes her feel calm, he grounds her. She is soothed by the sound of his voice when he mutters the lines he knows by heart under his breath, something Betty would be infuriated by with anyone else. His teasing jabs don’t pierce her skin because comments make it clear he doesn’t define her by her perfectionism and ponytail—they’re just pieces of who she is. 

She had always assumed he judged her for those things. And maybe he had, once. But he isn’t now. 

She wonders, as she takes a nail file to her fingers the next morning, if _this_ element of who she is would be too much, would ultimately tip the scales out of her favor. It’s something Betty worries about with Archie and Veronica, too, that one day something will make them realize she isn’t worth the trouble. 

It is hard to not let her mind go there, but an early text from Veronica pauses the spiral. 

**_Can I pick you up early for a Pops run? Need to talk to you about something. Not quite 911-level but… 910._ **

The timing is excellent: Betty is able to slip out the door while her mother is in the shower, avoiding an interrogation. 

Veronica is jumpy as she drives, drumming her fingers incessantly to an imperceptible beat and glancing at her phone where it sits in the holder every two seconds. 

“Are you sure you need more coffee, Veronica?” Betty asks gently. They’re in the parking lot at Pop’s, busy with the early morning crowd, and Veronica hasn’t spoken more than a _hello_ since she got in the car. 

“Yes, definitely. I didn’t sleep at all.” 

Upon closer inspection, Betty can see carefully concealed circles hiding behind Veronica’s reading glasses. 

“How about just I go in? Maybe you sit and drink some of your water?” _Take a Xanax I know is in your backpack,_ Betty nearly adds. Veronica nods absentmindedly.

She tries to rush her time spent in Pop’s, both because the servers behind the counter seem overwhelmed (even Pop is out on the floor) and because Veronica is making her nervous. That doesn’t stop her from a serious consideration of which baked goods Jughead might like best.

Betty gets one of everything. She can hopefully tempt V with something and then Jughead will obviously polish off the rest.

(Is she supposed to feel so flushed thinking about Jughead licking the swipe of jelly from his doughnut off his lip the other day? Does she decide to get one more jelly doughnut because of that? _God, what is happening._ )

When Betty slides back into Veronica’s passenger seat and hands her the coffee with extra cream and sugar, she hesitates before asking. “Is everything okay? You’re freaking me out a bit, V.”

Veronica inhales deeply and closes her eyes.

“I’mthegirlinGinger’sphotos,” she says all in one breath.

Betty blinks. “Oh, wow. Okay, um—” She is frozen, not because of the implications of that statement but because of the statement itself. “So you and Ginger over the summer?”

She hits her head lightly against the headrest. “Yeah. Just a couple of times, at some Vixen parties.”

Betty knows that Ginger is out at school—one of the only out students, now that Kevin Keller moved away when his mom was transferred to a new Army base.

“Is... is this new for you?” she’s floundering, unsure how she can ask the questions she needs for context without offending her best friend.

Veronica waves her hands aimlessly. “Not really, no. I just haven’t ever felt the need to bring it up or anything. It’s something that just _is_ for me.” She turns to Betty, accepting the coffee cup she holds up in offering. “Are you okay knowing this? Am I still freaking you out?”

It’s then that Betty realizes, fully, the gravity of the moment. She is the first person Veronica has said this too. Careful not to spill hot coffee all over them, she reaches out to give her a fierce hug. “I love you so much,” she affirms. “Every part of you, V.” When she pulls back, there are tears welling up behind Veronica’s glasses. “Stuck like a barnacle, remember?”

She gives a watery laugh then takes a few long sips of her coffee. “God it feels good for it to be out there. I didn’t realize how much it hurt to still have one foot in the closet.”

“I bet.” Betty keeps her hand on Veronica’s arm to give her a reassuring squeeze. “Are _you_ okay? Is the Ginger thing what’s making you panic?”

Tears again. She nods. “I think so,” she whispers. “Like if there are photos from that angle, there must be more where it’s obvious I’m the other girl. It’s not that I’m scared of being out, or even of it being risque with my tits in the open or something.” Veronica pauses to smirk a bit. “I mean both of ours were, so.” Betty snorts. “Knowing those pictures are out there and hanging over my head, though? It’s fucking terrifying.”

Betty knows some of what Veronica is feeling, this impending doom of fallout, but it must be far different to have no idea when it’s coming. Or to have it be so personal to just _her._

_“_ What do you want to do?”

Veronica sighs. “No damn clue. Other than drink a vat of coffee, or go right to bed.”

Betty smiles in sympathy. “Would an apple turnover help?” she holds up the bag.

“Yes, yes it would.”

  
  
  
  


By the time Veronica has collected herself and they get to school, it’s right before the bell. They walk in arm-in-arm and Betty feels her roll her shoulders back to brace herself. The halls are full and buzzing, but they move quickly through them to avoid hearing the gossip hounds. Archie waits for Veronica at her locker and perks up when he spots them.

Veronica’s footsteps falter and Betty leans in. “Do you want to tell him yet?”

She shakes her head. “I will soon, but not today. One trip out of the closet per day is my max.” Betty squeezes her arm in goodbye and they part ways, though she tries to keep her eye on Archie and Veronica as long as possible. Veronica gives him a very thorough hello kiss that has Betty blushing all the way across the hall.

It’s because her two best friends are making out in the hallway. It is _not_ because she is thinking about the impossibility of Jughead greeting her that way in the _Blue & Gold _office. 

It’s not because Jughead practically pounces on her for the Pop’s bag before she’s even through the doorway.

“You were gone early,” he notes, carefully selecting his first treat. A jelly doughnut, because Betty is destined to lose her mind it seems. He notices things, notices _her. “_ Everything okay?”

Betty explains it away, “Girl stuff.”

His eyebrows raise in skepticism, likely over the lie itself rather than the content of the lie, but she’s feeling prickly and defensive this morning. Every atom in her body is aflame with the need to protect Ginger and Veronica from the same misogynist bullshit she went through in the spring. “Yes, Jug,” she says sharply. “I do occasionally need to act like a girl first and not your asshole co-editor. Just because you think you’re a great observer doesn’t mean you actually know me.”

She sees him bristle and his face cloud slightly. “I’ve never called you an asshole, Betty.”

Just as she opens her mouth to apologize, take it all back and thank him for checking on her, the bell rings. Jughead drops the bag of treats down on the desk with a thump and picks up his backpack, shrugging past her to class. “Jug, wait—” but he melts into the crowded hallway without turning around.

And for the second time in less than twelve hours, Betty is on the verge of tears over a miscommunication with Jughead.

Unable to think of what else to do, she pulls a pad of sticky notes from the desk and writes _I’m sorry_ on it. She spends far too long debating whether she should include a small heart on it so she makes a snap decision to do so as the warning bell rings, then sticks it to the grease-laden bag.

Hoping he might venture there first at lunch—in an effort to avoid her, Betty thinks as her heart squeezes—and see it, Betty leaves for class. 

  
  
  
  


There’s a chilly mist hanging around the outdoor lunch tables, so Betty and Archie find themselves at a table tucked into the corner of the cafeteria. Ostensibly waiting for both Veronica and Jughead, though Betty is confident he’ll be avoiding her for the day.

The way Archie lights up when Veronica appears at the cafeteria doors is precious. She’s nervous, yes, that her two favorite people in the world becoming romantically involved might end up in either the world imploding or in her being forgotten about. But, this morning aside, Veronica seems as delighted by this change as Archie is, so Betty lets them have their honeymoon.

Veronica sits on her side of the table, though, which is a relief—being relegated to third wheel this early on would be a bad sign. 

“Where’s your shadow?” she asks.

Betty only half resents the implication. It has only been a week but she’s gotten used to Jughead being so close so often. It has resulted in a confusion knot of emotions, yes, but the overall effect is a positive one. Until she lost her temper with him.

Betty _is_ mad. But her anger made Jughead collateral damage, and now he’s mad right back at her.

It needles her, knowing that she was far more gracious when he lost it with her the previous week, but—

_Ugh._ Betty needs to stop this. Spinning in circles about what Jughead does or does not feel toward her right now is useless.

She stabs a fork at her limp salad. “I’m not his keeper.”

Her tone has even Archie paying attention, breaking his dopey gaze from Veronica to her, brow furrowed.

“Lovers’ quarrel?”

Good to know that Archie has co-opted Veronica’s teasing too.

Betty scowls.

“What, are you two calling it quits already?” Jughead appears from behind Betty and slides in across from her, having misheard Archie’s comment.

Veronica looks delighted, Archie chagrined, and Betty could melt into the ground from sheer discomfort. Jughead actively avoids making eye contact with her.

She does, though, see some powdered sugar on the cuff of his flannel, so he must have grabbed another snack by now and seen her note.

With the dumb heart. And now he won’t look at her.

_Wonderful,_ Betty moans to herself and pretends to be very invested in cutting up a large piece of spinach. 

They are all offered a distraction, though not a good one, when there is a commotion at a table across the room. Betty sees Ginger for the first time today, flanked by her friends, all of whom are glaring at Donna Sweett where she stands in front of them, hip cocked and sanctimonious grin wide on her face. 

It’s hard to hear but Betty is catching snippets of _whore_ and _dyke_ and before she can stand in righteous anger and go defend her, Veronica is halfway there and shoving Donna back. The rest of them skitter over to where a larger circle is gathering. 

Betty breaks through the crowd, desperate to shove Donna for herself and back up Veronica, but Jughead tugs her back by the elbow. “Let her have this one herself,” he says low in her ear. 

(She has to suppress a shudder. _This is not the time, calm down._ His hand remains warm through the thin material of her sleeve.) 

She listens to his suggestion and watches Donna swing around to face Veronica. Still unable to hear, Betty strains her ears but can only hear the fanatic _Ooohhh_ ’s from the students around them. What she does hear is the resounding is the resounding smack of Veronica’s palm against Donna’s face. 

Donna looks murderous, but the faculty supervisors finally catch up to the chaos and step between the two of them. Crystal clear: “Weatherbee’s office. Now.” 

Veronica marches off, head held high, but Betty sees the exchanged glance between her and Ginger, and Ginger’s mouthed _thank you._

Beside them, Archie looks a bit stunned. And, if Betty’s hunch is correct, kind of turned on. She elects to ignore that. “I’m gonna grab her bag and wait at the office for her,” Archie tells them, and then she and Jughead are left by themselves. 

Jughead seems to realize then that he is still touching her and retracts his hand slowly. The sensation of his palm print is seared into her, which has her dying to snatch it back and move it to more places. The small of her back. Against her own palm. Cupping her cheek. Him leaning down to whisper to her again, but they’re alone and it’s anything _but_ school-appropriate. 

Flushed and fidgety, Betty turns toward him. She desperately hopes he isn’t still mad and on the verge of running off again. 

When she finds her voice again, it’s higher pitched from those mental images she is trying to quell. “I think I might finish eating in the office.” 

Jughead nods curtly, silent. 

“Come with?” (Should she tack on a _please_ ? Is that too desperate? _Is_ she this desperate?)

Finally— _finally—_ he looks her in the eye. Another nod, but softer. He is still close, but not quite at her ear, when he answers. “Right behind you.” 

  
  
  
  


Veronica doesn’t reappear until the end of the day. 

Betty is drumming her fingers against the _Blue & Gold _desk, anxious and almost wishing she hadn’t cancelled the regular staff meeting this afternoon. She had wanted the extra Alice-approved time to regroup with Veronica and didn’t think she could face Donna in the meeting without taking a slap herself. 

Again, Jughead is lounging on his back across the desks, drumming his own fingers in an incongruous rhythm. From the corner of her eye, Betty can see his eyes flicker to her every so often. He looks like he may say something, but seems to decide better of it. 

On the fourth occasion, Betty is ready to get up and plant herself squarely in front of him and demand he say what’s on his mind. That the motion would put her midsection—a lower—right at his face is not lost on her. It’s _fine,_ she’s fine, she’s totally calm. 

This is when Veronica flounces in. 

“If it isn’t million dollar baby,” Jughead quips from his spot, unmoving.

Both Betty and Veronica roll their eyes. “Weatherbee wanted to suspend both of us but once I repeated all the vile shit that bitch was saying, he bumped me down to just detention for the week, and no Vixens suspension either. _Cruel language is no excuse for physical violence, Miss Lodge,”_ she mocks in his pompous voice.

Guess Betty could have run the paper meeting anyway, if Donna is suspended.

“Are you okay?” Betty hopes her intonation is enough for Veronica to understand she is asking as broadly as she can with Jughead in earshot.

“I’ll be alright,” she answers lightly. “I’m already late for detention but wanted to fill you in. I had to find Archie before his practice started.” Veronica shrugs. “It was worth it just to see my handprint on her smug face.”

And with a swish of her hair, she’s gone, leaving Betty alone with Jug again.

“Um—” she starts.

Jughead cuts her off. “It’s fine, Betts.” Her stomach swoops with the intimate nature of using this new-found nickname. “Like I said last night, we’re all dealing with a mountain of bullshit. I can take a few hits.” He pulls himself up—god he has the _abs_ for that?—and spins on the desk to face her. “No Lodge-esque hits, please. I know you have the ability to floor me.”

She nods, grateful, and flexes her fingers to hold herself back from hugging him. Something tells her that for as much as they’re becoming ...close, physical touch beyond their current status could backfire.

Still, Betty thinks Jughead would give great hugs. It’s startling how touch-starved she suddenly feels, even though she gets plenty of hugs from Veronica. Friendship hugs are different, she argues with herself. But that’s all a hug from Jughead would be anyway, right? They’re not butting heads anymore, and they’re becoming friends, that’s all.

(That’s all she wants, right? _Right, god,_ Betty groans.)

“What time are you back under house arrest?”

Betty glances at the clock. “The 10 minutes it takes to drive home after our meeting would be over. Veronica was my ride though, so I’ll have to call my mom and tell her I’m walking.”

Jughead seems to study her for a moment and then—carefully—says, “I can give you a lift.”

Betty blinks. “Since when do you have a car?”

  
  
  
  


It isn’t a car. 

Jughead is driving a motorcycle. 

More accurately, Jughead is _straddling_ a motorcycle and Betty wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like. 

“C’mon,” Jughead says with a smirk. “It’s this or walking. Or you could call your mom.” Fuck him and his sanctimonous grin and his unfairly beautiful hair, free from his beanie to swap for his helmet. 

She hedges. “There’s only one helmet.” 

Jughead proffers it in her direction. “I’ll be okay for a few minutes. I know this will make you feel better.” 

Her heart is in her throat, out of nerves for the safety of this all. And of exhilaration at the prospect of having to hang onto him and his apparent abs for the next ten minutes. 

“Do you have gloves for yourself at least?” 

He nods, pulls a pair from his jacket pocket, and waves them. 

“What about my backpack?” 

“Betty where do you think the helmet lives, or _my_ bag is?” He swings his leg off— _god—_ and pats the seat cushion, where the storage must be. “Toss it in there.”

Betty gives in. Like she ever wasn’t going to. “But... just go slow, okay?”

The smirk again. “Oh no, it’s way more dangerous that way. Hop on.” 

She does, tentatively seating herself behind him and slipping the helmet on with the face guard flipped up. “Where do I hang on?” The pitch of her voice is far too high for him to not have noticed. 

“Oh, um—” is _his_ voice a little higher too? “—around my waist is best. He reaches behind him and motions for her to give him her arms. The space between them is probably too much to be safe but Betty doesn’t know if she can be responsible for her actions if she’s closer. “You’re gonna have to scoot closer, Betts. I don’t want your mother to put a hit out on me if anything happens. Or Veronica, for that matter.” 

All in, she supposes, and brings herself flush to his back, letting him pull her arms around him. He _does_ have abs. Again, the warmth of his hands through the fabric of her clothing is unbearable, even with the layer of her pea coat. When Jughead lets go, he swipes his palms on his thighs, almost as though they’re sweaty from... nerves of his own? 

She can’t let herself go there, not now. Not ever, really, but especially not while she’s going to wrap herself around him and hang on for dear life. She cannot watch him slip on his gloves and feel something burning in her gut about the flex of his fingers. 

Once the engine rumbles to life, she _really_ can’t because the motorcycle nerves are back. 

“You alright?” Jughead yells over his shoulder. 

“I think so,” she calls back. And then they’re off and Betty practically buries her face in the rough corduroy of his jacket, afraid to see their surroundings whipping by. 

A few minutes in and the wind rushing over her starts to feel refreshing instead of terrifying. Carefully, she lifts her head. The blur of the turning leaves looks beautiful. 

“How are we doing back there?” Jughead asks, slowing for a stop sign. 

“Okay, I think.” 

One hand comes off the handlebars and reaches back to rest on her thigh for a very _long_ moment before its subsequent reassuring pat. It’s less reassuring than it is setting her aflame. 

By the time they stop at the corner of Elm, Betty is sorry to have the freeing sensation end. 

“Will I have a shotgun trained on me if I pull into the driveway?” Jughead’s voice is teasing, but it’s a fair question. 

“She’s at work,” Betty answers. “I’m just supposed to call from the landline.” 

His abs tense under her grip for just a second. “Okay,” and gently kicks into gear. The low rumble of the engine makes her clench her stomach for the few seconds it takes to reach Fred’s driveway and throw down the kickstand. 

Reluctantly, Betty pulls away her hands. The way Jughead freezes at the movement is a mild hint that maybe, _just maybe_ , he liked the contact too. 

Whatever is happening between the two of them, it might not be only in her head. As she’s pulling off his helmet and trying to fix her ponytail, shaking the hair tie out, she can see him watching her intently in the side mirror. 

There is no way on god’s green earth that Betty can ask Jughead if he wants to come inside without it sounding like a come on. _Do you want to print things for our quasi-murderboard_ is not a common euphemism, but for the two of them it may as well be. 

Instead, she lets them sit in tense silence. Even without the wind rushing against them, there is a slight chill in the air and Jughead is warm enough that separating by a fraction has her shivering. 

In the mirror, his Adam’s apple bobs. 

For balance, Betty hangs on to his shoulders as she clambers off the bike. She busies herself straightening her coat so as to not gawk while Jughead climbs off and turns to retrieve both their bags. 

_Do not stare at his ass, do not stare at his ass, do not stare at his ass._

Their fingers brush in the handoff and _honestly, get a grip, Cooper. You are not allowed to be a slave to your hormones after one motorcycle ride. There are important things to do._

The internal battle rages in her head until she realizes she hasn’t said anything since he pulled in. Jughead leans against the bike seat, fidgeting with his beanie in his hands. He looks much softer without his hat, Betty notices. It’s not just that his hair is messy underneath, but something about his whole demeanor changes. 

This might be the first time she has ever seen him with it off. 

It’s likely the first time since childhood he’s seen her with her hair down, too. 

Jughead stands up suddenly, as though he has made a firm decision. At his full height, not slouched to dodge others’ eyes, he is several inches taller than her. She tilts her head up to make eye contact and sees his gaze flicker down and then back up. Unable to stop herself, she draws her lower lip under her teeth, and his eyes move again. And then, “Betty—” 

In her pocket, Betty’s phone buzzes angrily and she flinches, startled. The moment breaks and Jughead takes a large step backward. 

Betty blinks hard, doing her best to not let tears well up. 

Because she might as well, she pulls out her phone, expecting it to be Alice demanding her location. It’s Veronica, for the third time according to her notifications. 

“Veronica?” she picks up. On the other end, her friend is audibly crying, enough that Jughead hears. He straightens up and digs in his pockets, putting things together faster than Betty when he holds up his phone to her. 

**Veronica Lodge, Queen Vixen, how about we take you off the top of that pyramid? Truth or Quest?**

  
  
  
  


Risking the wrath of Alice, whenever she comes home, Betty tells Veronica to come right over. 

“Do you think you’re okay to drive?” Betty feels a bit frantic, unsure of the best way to get to Veronica if she is too worked up to be on the road. 

Jughead waves in her periphery to get her attention. “I can take you if you need,” he whispers. 

She does not have the mental faculties to cling to Jughead again on the back of his bike, not after whatever was about to happen before Veronica called. But—she nods, mouthing maybe to him. Her own eyes sting, tears threatening to come at the sound of her best friend so distraught. 

Jughead must be able to tell; tentatively, he broaches the space he had put between them and rests a hand on her shoulder. 

“I think so,” Veronica hiccups. “We don’t need Alice out for blood if you’re not there.”

With their early morning conversation on her mind, Betty can’t stop bouncing her foot while she sits on the front steps and keeps watch for Veronica’s sleek black sedan. After looking a bit uncertain, Jughead sits down beside her, close enough for their arms to touch, close enough for Betty to—if she were braver—rest her head against his shoulder. She is suddenly bone tired. 

It is so much, too much, to go through this a third time. Betty had only just pieced herself together, cracks still showing, when the school year began. Shards broke loose when she decided to take Sweetwater down with Jughead. Now she feels shattered all over again, nauseous over seeing her best friend struggle with this. 

Betty has to be the strong one to keep Veronica upright; she is unsure if she has it in her. 

“We’ll end this, Betty,” Jughead says firmly. “We won’t let anybody else get hurt.” _Not like us_ hangs unspoken in the air between them. 

Tentatively, she leans into him. With about the same level hesitation, Jughead lifts his arm around her shoulder. It hovers a fraction away from her for a few excruciating seconds before he pulls her close and wraps her in the embrace. 

Her instinct had been right: even awkward with each other, Jughead gives good hugs. 

Unlike the last time they were this close and interrupted, they don’t immediately separate when Veronica turns onto the block. As she parks haphazardly in the Cooper driveway, Jughead stands but trails his hand to the edge of her shoulder and squeezes. “We’ve got this,” he murmurs and then he’s gone, loping off into Archie’s house and passing Veronica. 

He does stop and say something to her, briefly, and Veronica gives him a grateful look before rushing to Betty. 

“Fuck,” she swears into Betty’s sweater, burrowing into the hug. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Betty.” 

Betty sighs. “I know, I know.” 

Inside, she makes them tea and brings it upstairs to where Veronica is swiping makeup remover under her eyes at Betty’s vanity. “Do you have anything stronger,” Veronica asks in a wry voice. 

“You know you’re my liquor hookup,” Betty teases. “The Coopers are a dry house, unless you want to break into Alice’s wine fridge.” 

That earns her a laugh. “Like I said, I don’t need Alice Cooper out to get me too.” Her energy dips with that. “B, what am I supposed to do? There’s no way my truth isn’t the rest of those party photos and I’m... Ugh.”

Betty hands over the tea. “You deserve to control how and when you come out, Veronica, and I am so sorry you’re backed into a corner. It isn’t fair at all.” 

“It’s,” she swallows, heaves a sigh, and tries her best to continue. “It’s not about not being ready or being ashamed. Or even about the blowback at school. I can handle the bullshit fetishizing or people saying it’s not true because I’ve only ever visibly dated guys. It’s just that things are so precarious at home and Daddy won’t understand and Mami will probably try but get overwhelmed and I need things to stay stable there until I can get the hell out.

“But who even knows what kind of shit they’ll pull for the quest. I mean, Reggie’s wasn’t life ruining but if they are equating the seriousness of the quest to the truth then who knows? What if I get arrested or have to do something that will wreck college prospects?” Veronica gets up and lets herself fall face first onto Betty’s comforter. “Can we do something stupid and girly and distracting?” 

A playlist is selected, chocolate procured, and nail polish bottles dumped on the floor for perusal. “All you have is like 10 shades of the same plain pink, B, what is wrong with you?” 

“Go look in Polly’s half of the bathroom, then.” 

“I get to pick a color for you and you can’t say no, best friend rules mean the sad one gets final say on everything,” Veronica calls out.

Betty rolls her eyes but at least Veronica has perked up. She looks gleeful when she holds up a bottle of purple so dark it is practically black. “I wonder what beanie boy next door will say when you show up looking edgy and hot with dark nails and an outfit of my choosing for tomorrow.” 

Betty gulps, face burning, and Veronica’s cheshire cat grin widens. “I knew you were hot for him, don’t think I didn’t see you two canoodling when I pulled in.”

“He may have driven me home on his motorcycle,” Betty admits, refusing to meet her eye. 

Veronica shrieks in delight. “Okay, I’ll give him that, motorcycles are kinda hot. Were you dying?” 

Betty mumbles, “Maybe.” She smiles a bit though, the relief of verbalizing this—this thing palpable. “Just paint my damn nails, Veronica.” 

They both hum and sing along to the music, and Veronica is finishing up the top coat on Betty’s left hand when she lifts her head. She looks calm as she speaks. “Fuck them, I am not letting them control how I come out.”

  
  
  


.

.

.

_tbc_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you would be so inclined, I would love to hear what you think.


	3. archie, 12:55pm: part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you'll see that the chapter count has increased! for this installment, at least, I have Jug & Archie in part one, and Veronica & Betty in part two is forthcoming. hopefully this makes things more manageable as we go along. 
> 
> an eternal thank you to my mystery-plotting-expert, the wind beneath my wings, and fellow educator mourning the end of winter break iconicponytail for being my sounding board on everything, but especially on how the fuck to plan red herrings
> 
> another thank you and belated hello to my new varchie buds! writing the entire core 4 is new territory for me and I've loved seeing all your enthusiastic responses!
> 
> heads up for: continued instances of fp being a shit parent, mentions of a past parental physical abuse instance, mentions of drugs, mentions of fear of being outed, coming out

_And so I run to the things they said could restore me  
_ _Restore life the way it should be_

* * *

Once again, Jughead’s alarm jolts him out of a dream featuring Betty. 

He drags a hand down his face and tries to knock himself out of this. Between the content of his dream and the aborted kiss yesterday afternoon, Jughead feels both at his best and worst. 

Yes, he is overcome with embarrassment over failing to kiss Betty, but he was _about to._ There is also a smug pride smoothing up his spine because he could tell that Betty had been every bit as in that moment as he had. And because Jughead knows how much the motorcycle ride had thrown her off-kilter in the naked want in her eyes that spurred him into action. 

It is this cockiness that fuels his next move. 

**_Want to take the bike to school with me?_ **

Does he want to run the risk of exacerbating his already-uncomfortable morning wood by having Betty hold onto him that tightly again? If it recreates the moment, that bubble they were living in for those precious few minutes—then yes. It would be worth it. Especially if he can convince her to lock the door to the _Blue & Gold_ and spend their day trading off investigating and making out. 

(Wishful thinking, he knows. If he were ever to convince Betty to ditch class, it would not be to fool around with him on school grounds.)

When Jughead shuffles into the bathroom with his towel, he notices that Fred has nailed a third hook into the wall for him to hang it on. Sure, the hook looks like it’s been in the very bottom of Fred’s toolbox for as long as Jughead has been alive, but it’s one more small action to make him feel welcomed and at home in this house. 

As is the extra coffee mug set out for him by the coffee pot, with $10 slipped under it for lunch like Fred does for Archie under his water bottle every morning. 

Jughead would leave it behind—he knows this isn’t charity, but that particular chip will be lodged on his shoulder for a while—except that would hurt Fred’s feelings more than it will hurt his own pride to take it. So he slips it into his wallet and sips from the mug while leaning against the counter and looking at his bike. 

The idea to offer Betty another ride only occurred to him after they hung up last night— _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ this time, with Betty evading his questions about Veronica’s choice of truth or quest. And he can respect that, the need to protect her best friend; he would do the same for Archie, as Archie would do for both of them, and Veronica in return for Betty. 

It makes him queasy to think that, if he and Betty don’t work fast enough, that Archie and Betty are likely to be called upon soon, and this Gordian knot of loyalty will be fully enacted.

_Not now,_ she had pleaded over the phone, the exact phrasing he himself had used when Betty rushed up to him to check on the number FP’s beer bottle had done to his face. _Not now,_ he’d begged, overwhelmed with shame and with the floral perfume of her hair product. Betty respected his request, and he respects hers.

It’s that scent from her hair that haunted him from the moment he dismounted the bike yesterday afternoon, through a painfully cold shower, over the phone when she whispered _goodnight, Jug,_ and all the way through now, waiting for a response to his text while shaking the dream he woke up during from his mind. 

(It is hard to disentangle from the tactile memory of Betty’s grip around his stomach, given that the dream had them on the bike again. Only in this version, it is Betty’s legs wrapped around his midsection as he presses her against the seat, her lips hot on his neck while he runs his palms up beneath her sweater. Dream-Betty had sighed his name in pleasure and dragged him closer with her grip and ground their hips together and—)

**_Veronica is picking me up this morning, I’m sorry. She wants to talk to Archie before class though so I can meet you in the B &G? _ **

It's a disappointment, sure, but he understands that, with Veronica as the Sweetwater target du jour, Betty will be in full supportive-best-friend mode. 

Even so, Jughead is heartened that Betty continues to make time for him. 

If this had been even a week prior, Jughead might think she is only doing so out of obligation. Now, though... now they're in a place where he is certain that she would have kissed him back yesterday had they not been interrupted. 

The idea to even kiss her in the first place arrived unbidden in his mind and firmly planted itself there a few nights ago while they watched _Jaws_ and talked late into the night. There is a surprising intimacy to their nightly routine and Jughead finds it easier to be lighter, more vulnerable when he is able to speak without looking at her. 

Not that he _doesn't_ want to look at Betty. Jughead very much wants to look at her. 

Betty's curtains are closed now and had been last night, likely from when Veronica came over. He wonders if she might open them again, despite her embarrassment from when he _had_ gotten quite the look at Betty the other evening, so much so that he choked on his own breath when he thought she wasn't wearing any pants. “Pantsless” and “Betty Cooper” were such an incongruous pairing in his mind that Jughead voiced his surprise and accidentally received more than just a look. 

After practically flashing him, Betty dropped to the floor in embarrassment, but that didn't stop the image of her tiny shorts and her shirt lifted nearly up to her breasts from searing itself into his mind. 

The space between the Cooper and Andrews houses never felt so great. 

Jughead had wrestled with himself—the warring sides of his brain wanted to both reassure Betty and act like the walking pile of hormones that he was. Somehow he managed to do both, by giving her the out but confirming he wasn't put off by the incident—though he hadn't been about to tell her how much the opposite was the case. 

He had spent the entire time between his text and her phone call deciding if he needed to take care of things in the shower, or if taking a second shower of the day would clue Fred or Archie into anything. He'd finally given in and was reaching for his towel when Betty called him back. Yes, the memory of her bare skin would have made him very happy in the shower, but hearing her voice in reality is much better—as is his conscious for not having jacked off to an event that clearly embarrassed her.

He kicks the bike into gear in the Andrewses’ driveway, sipping his coffee while it idles and warms up. Sitting on the leather seat doesn't feel the same without Betty wrapped around him and Jughead wonders if that sensation of newness, of her absence, might ever go away. It discomfits him to be so affected by her. Then again, the ghost of her touch makes everything feel more real, confirming these moments _did_ happen, letting them become tangible, tactile. It reminds Jughead that he is allowed to feel close to somebody in the way he is becoming close with Betty. 

There’s a new key slipped onto the keyring, Jughead realizes. He carefully lifts the set without jostling the ignition, though he’s not sure why. There is only one key it could be: one to the door of the house he’s parked beside. 

Jughead clears his throat, trying not to let his appreciation for Fred Andrews swallow him whole. 

Taking the bike to school yesterday was a whim (the tantalizing thought of Betty joining him for the ride home not even remotely on his mind) so he doesn’t know why Fred assumed he would even take the bike keys today to see the new addition. 

Then again, Fred knows the Jones way. It could be that he put it there for the next time Jughead wasn’t riding with Archie. More likely, Fred instinctively guessed that Jughead would take a shine to the bike, perhaps taking after FP in this one benign way. 

Today, Jughead drives it out of necessity, because he plans to see FP again after school. Maybe Fred guessed that too. 

He’s visiting with a forewarning this time. He hopes his father is not as plastered and willing to throw projectiles at him as last week. The bruise on Jughead’s cheekbone is past its unpleasant shade of yellow, nearly faded, and he doesn’t want to explain away another one to Betty’s concerned face, or Veronica’s narrowed gaze. He also doesn’t want Fred Andrews arrested for kicking the shit out of his father, much as he might want to see that fight.

Considering that just last Monday, Jughead was getting claps on the shoulder from people who had once shoved him into lockers, his path through the halls is surprisingly devoid of interaction. It is not that he is back to his usual anonymity, though. Quite the opposite: Jughead is followed by glares or looks of genuine fear, and even hisses from the least creative of the bunch. Sweetwater had certainly succeeded in their endeavor to knock him down a peg. Or twelve. Showing up on a motorcycle all of the sudden probably had not done him any more favors in separating himself from his father’s legacy.

But he soldiers on.

When he gets to the _Blue & Gold _ office, Betty is there and—thankfully—alone. 

Betty is also dressed unlike he has ever seen her. Or—is dressed in elements of how he has previously seen her. Jughead recognizes everything Betty is wearing, though once again he finds himself confused as to how or why. The articles of clothing are just paired differently: a short denim skirt she usually wears with tights; a tight, dark v-neck long-sleeved shirt that would go with a bright, jeweled cardigan; heeled ankle boots that she wears with her jeans. 

The overall effect is an assault of bare skin on his delicate, easily-overwhelmed-by-Betty-Cooper senses. There are toned legs and another painful dip of cleavage and dangly earrings drawing attention to the curve of her jaw that Jughead had mouthed hungrily against in his dream. 

Betty watches him look at her, _stare_ at her really, and he sees as she fidgets that her nails are painted with a dark color. 

“Veronica dressed me,” Betty says, sheepish. 

Is he going to have to _thank Veronica Lodge_ for something? He just might. 

Jughead fights to find his voice. “It’s a good look. Well—I mean,” he flounders. “ _You_ look good, too. Great even.” Ceiling. He is staring at the ceiling and not at whatever reaction Betty is having to his lack of coherency over how she looks. 

“Thank you, Juggie.” She says it quietly, like she isn’t sure she wants him to hear it, the thanks or the nickname. 

Desperate to get a hold of himself, Jughead pivots. “Speaking of Veronica, how is she doing?” 

Betty hums, noncommittal. “About as well as to be expected.” 

“She’s picking truth, though, right?” 

Again, Betty plays coy, and not in a fun way. “She hasn’t decided yet.” 

Something pricks at the back of his mind. This should be a no-brainer to Veronica, especially after Reggie’s stunt. The logical thing is to pick truth so you don’t run the risk of having to do something dangerous—especially because if you fail or beg off the quest, the truth would come out anyway. 

But at the same time, would he have picked truth, if he had any inkling what would have been revealed? He might not have, knowing what was a stake.

Which begs the question: what deep, dark secret is Veronica keeping under wraps? 

Lunchtime finds Jughead once again struck wordless by Betty’s outfit, though this time it is because they take advantage of the nice weather and eat outside—Betty is next to him on the picnic bench and each shift of her position draws his eyes to where her skirt is riding up on her thigh. 

On his opposite side, Jughead pinches himself hard on his own thigh through the thin fabric of his inner jeans pocket. The jolt breaks him from his mild stupor. _Get your shit together,_ he thinks. _Don’t be such a perv._

If anything, Jughead is the most gentlemanly of the guys outside for lunch but only because the bar is set disgustingly low. A few of Archie’s more neanderthal-like teammates had wolf whistled as Betty swung herself over the bench to sit down, resulting in Betty tugging at the hem of her skirt (to little avail, clearly) and turning bright red. 

Veronica’s insult in their direction had only served to rile them up, yelling out _Cooper!_ and then making lewd gestures when Betty looked up. After Jughead glared at them, commentary switched to things along of _sticking your serpent where it doesn’t belong_ and _Betty having snakes for lunch_ and Jughead had been too frozen to do anything, his own face on fire. They only stopped when Archie shouted about benching them for the next game. 

They’re all in awkward silence now and Betty stabs a cherry tomato with force before letting out a huge sigh. 

“Can we say anything else right now,” she asks quietly. 

Filling silence with unnecessary quips is Jughead’s specialty, at least. “Veronica, would you like to spice things up again with another good smack to an asshole’s face?” 

Veronica flips him off delicately. “Fresh manicure, Jones, so hard pass.” She considers her nails before speaking up again, “I did break one from hitting Donna though, which was worthwhile collateral damage.” 

Jughead raises an eyebrow at her, but says nothing when Betty huffs out a laugh and resumes eating her lunch—with less fork-stabbing than before. 

“Donna’s the worst,” Archie supplies. “Remember when I broke a beaker in bio lab sophomore year and she got herself excused from the assignment from the ‘trauma of it all’?” 

“You should try giving her any sort of feedback on articles,” Betty scoffs. “Some days I think she might try to spear me in the eye with the editing pen.” 

Jughead, having witnessed every painful paper meeting with Donna, knows this to be very true. “Don’t worry, Betts, I’d take the hit for you. I think an eye patch would be a great addition to my look.” 

When Betty laughs, tension he didn’t know was in his chest dissipates. “I don’t know, I think it might overpower the beanie,” she says, reaching up to flick one of the crown points. He tries his best to not notice how the movement puts her bare thigh even closer to him. 

Across the table, Archie is doubled over in laughter, likely over his own joke before he’s even said it. “You could go as a sexy pirate for Halloween at least,” he wheezes. The line itself isn’t that funny but Archie’s uncontrollable giggling is infectious and soon the four of them are out of breath from laughter. They’ve only just calmed down when Veronica spins her phone around to show them all a photo of a ‘Sexy Male Pirate’ costume. 

“You do have the hair for it, Jug,” Betty teases, suppressing more giggles. 

They’re all laughing so hard that they nearly miss the bell. 

Jughead discovers that he and Veronica share a study hall period when she scares him half to death bursting through the Blue & Gold office door while he is leaning back in the wheeled chair, scrubbing his hands over his eyes in an effort to clear an on-coming headache. 

(It’s a side effect of talking to FP, though it’s never come on _before_ talking to his father.) 

“ _Jesus,_ Lodge,” Jughead swears, nearly falling out of the chair. “Warn a guy.” 

She waves it away. “Oh calm down, better to catch you crying than catch you with your hands otherwise preoccupied.” Jughead scowls at her, unsure which accusation he should be most annoyed by. “You’re welcome, by the way,” Veronica says with a wink, “for the denim skirt. I talked her out of tights.” 

Jughead inhales and exhales a measured breath. “Did you want something, Veronica, or are you simply here to harass me?” 

“Here to help, actually,” she chirps. “I figured we could dig through all my former Spence compatriots to see if there’s Riverdale overlap. Conniving as these bastards are, I’m not sure they would slip up with Insta follows, but it can’t hurt to check.” 

They weren’t hanging their hats on Veronica’s contacts turning up major intel, but Jughead hadn’t considered it might be a fruitless endeavor altogether. _Of course_ these people wouldn’t want to leave a paper trail, especially not a digital one. His dismay must be apparent because Veronica clucks her tongue at him. 

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think this will be a complete waste of time,” she assures him. “Yeah maybe our culprits aren’t going to be liking party photos from one another, but we can follow trails based on whatever innocent connections there are. At the very least we can cross reference those people with any of the names on our suspect list.” Veronica then pauses, as though realizing for the first time that all their notes have disappeared. 

“Everything is under the screen and map,” Jughead gestures with a nod of his head. “We had to cover up for the staff meetings and anybody walking by during the day.” 

Veronica gets up to peer behind their makeshift screens. “Hand me a pen?” 

Jughead does, then watches her write her own name down on the timeline, mouth set in a grim line. “Have you answered them yet?” 

Slowly, she nods her head, then ducks out from under the world map. 

“And?” he prompts, gritting his teeth at her not being forthright. _Spit it out,_ he wants to snap. 

As if on cue, Jughead’s phone vibrates in his back pocket and Veronica’s lights up on the desk. The Sweetwater Secrets logo stares up at him: **Stay tuned for instructions, Park Avenue Princess.**

His jaw drops, watching Veronica rush to pick up her phone, which is brightening over and over again with more notifications tagged with the interlocking S’s logo—instructions for the quest, he assumes. “You’re taking chances on the dare? Why? Are they sending you the details now? Let me see.” Jughead leans forward, reaching toward her, and Veronica snatches the phone away from him. 

“Why do you _think,”_ she hisses at him. “Because things went so well for _you_ when truths came out? That information didn’t upend your life? You’re perfectly happy with everybody in this godforsaken school knowing your business?” 

“Of course not, but I didn’t know what they had. You clearly _do_ know what they have on you. What is it?” 

Veronica looks at him with disdain. “If you think I’m telling you about my private life just because you want to stick your tongue down my best friend’s throat, you’ve got another thing coming.” 

Jughead brushes aside the dig about his—apparently obvious—thing for Betty. “Maybe not, but you’ve got your tongue down _my_ best friend’s throat and I deserve to know if your bullshit is going to affect him.” 

“Go fuck yourself, Jones.” Veronica stomps out of the room and Jughead drops back into the chair, furious. 

**_Did you know Veronica was picking quest?_ **he texts Betty. They’d all said they would work together to figure this out—Veronica included. What the hell can they accomplish if Veronica isn’t going to at least share what the quest is? 

The period isn’t even halfway over and she’s in class, so Jughead is surprised to see the answer come back immediately. Then again, everyone probably checked the Sweetwater ping. 

**_Yes, I did. I’m in class though, can we talk about this later?_ **

Something in him snaps. Maybe it was Veronica’s comments, maybe it’s Betty keeping things about the investigation from him, maybe it’s having to talk to his fucking criminal father, but whatever it is has him standing up and kicking the chair with as much force as he can muster. 

It spins across the room and ricochets off the door frame with a grating clang of metal on metal. 

“Fuck this,” he mutters. There’s still two periods to go but Jughead can’t be in this building for another goddamn second. Without answering Betty’s message, he powers off his phone and throws it in the bottom of his bag. He should stop at his locker to grab some shit he needs to actually keep up with his classwork but Jughead can’t really bring himself to care right now. 

Instead, he pops open the office window that faces the parking lots and slides himself through it. Nobody would be around to bar him from leaving if he went out an actual doorway. This feels more satisfying, though. A bigger _fuck you_ to the building and the administration that keeps letting this bullshit happen and the people _behind_ this bullshit and the classmates who have begun to give him a wide berth in the halls simply because of who his father is. 

He also has a feeling that, despite her request to wait, Betty might be on her way to the Blue & Gold right now and Jughead is too frustrated to face her right now. 

_And too cowardly_ , the voice in the back of his head whispers. 

He drowns out that particular voice with the revving of the bike’s engine as he peels out of the lot, leaving Riverdale High behind him. 

The peeling paint on the Sunnyside Trailer Park sign greets Jughead as he idles at the entrance, as does the loping sheepdog that nobody really is sure who he belongs to. The dog eagerly snuffles at Jughead’s jacket pocket and he reluctantly offers up the beef jerky he’d wanted to eat for a snack. 

He gets a friendly _boof_ in response before the dog settles down under the rickety sign and goes to town on the jerky. 

“At least somebody appreciates my presence,” Jughead mutters. 

He had not alerted his dad that he would be showing up early, so Jughead is relieved to see FP kicked back on the front steps of the Jones trailer. His feet are propped up on an overturned propane tank which Jughead seriously hopes is empty since he is also halfway through a cigarette with the pack open next to him on the step. 

“Last I remember,” FP drawls, “School lets out after 2pm.” 

Jughead isn’t sure why he fibs, because his dad is who he is and probably had more absent days than present when he was at Riverdale High, but he sets his jaw and says, “I’ve got last period free.”

The pair of eyes that Jughead always regrets to see match his own in the mirror narrow slightly. “Uh- _huh.”_ He nods his head toward the bike when Jughead switches off the engine. “Glad to know some thief didn’t make off with that one. I was tempted to call the sheriff.” 

At this, Jughead lets out an involuntary bark of laughter. The last thing his father would _ever_ do in this town is rely on any sort of authority. Jughead knew that from jump, far, far before he knew anything about the Serpents. 

FP winks and stubs out the cigarette. “You wanna come in?” 

_Not really,_ Jughead thinks. But he knows this conversation is likely to end—or start, if he’s being honest—with a lot of yelling, so he nods and traipses in behind him. 

It’s… not _not_ clean, he realizes. Certainly more tidy than when Jughead had been here last. He casts a wary eye for any bottles or other projectiles and settles himself with the door handle inches away, ready for a quick exit. 

FP clocks this and the remnants of laughter at his own joke slide off his face. “I swore I would never become my father, Jug”— _yeah,_ he knows the feeling—“and I fucked that up the second I threw that bottle.” Upon further inspection, Jughead does notice the clean-shaven face and the lack of bottles altogether, but he isn’t going to hold his breath. 

He also doesn’t have time for FP to go on a rambling, half-assed emotional journey. “I don’t want to talk about that right now, Dad. Or ever, really, so save it. Please.” Much to his surprise, he nods, then perches on the rickety kitchen chair. 

“What do you want to talk about, then?” 

To his left, Jughead sees bright green on leather on the crooked set of hooks by the door; a large, green snake embroidered on the back of a jacket, bracketed by ‘Southside Serpents.’ “ _That,_ actually. Which I see you’re not hiding now that I’ve moved out.” 

FP’s flinch at ‘moved out’ is an open vulnerability Jughead didn’t expect. But there’s also anger in the expression so he reaches for the door handle. 

“Snakes don’t hide their scales, boy.” 

_Fairly certain that’s not true,_ Jughead thinks. Camouflage is a thing, is it not? “You seemed to hide it plenty before though. Not worried about me seeing it now that I found out through some teenage dipshit that you run a fucking gang?” 

“That wasn’t how I ever wanted you to find out, Jughead,” FP sighs. He runs a hand through his hair. “Figured you’d ask enough questions some day and then I’d have to say something. That day never came, so I didn’t bother.” 

Considering Jughead stopped asking FP questions in the 6th grade when he crumpled up a field trip permission slip and threw it out, his logic seems flawed. 

“So how does some anonymous asshole find this out? Is it an open secret to the whole Southside that you pull all this illegal, dirty shit, or are you just so crap at this too that you didn’t notice someone tailing you?” 

FP stands up to his full height and it’s Jughead’s turn to flinch. “Now you listen here, boy, I have _earned_ my title as king. There’s fucking honor in that responsibility and you’d best respect that. I sure as shit would have noticed some prissy Bulldog on my back and he sure as shit wouldn’t have made it back across the tracks.” 

Those words make Jughead’s stomach drop, that jolt when you’re nearly asleep but your brain screws up and thinks you’re falling. He twists the doorknob behind him, but has to get one last thing out. “If you’re so damn honorable, Dad, how come you can’t even take care of your own kid?” 

He lets the door slam and gets the hell out of there as fast as the bike allows. The sheepdog pops up from his nap spot and playfully bounds after him for a few yards and then the barking disappears behind him. 

There’s too much rage building within him for Jughead to go right back to Fred’s house, so he rides around on the bike until his headache has subsided. When he returns, Archie isn’t back from practice yet and he has the place to himself to grumble and stomp around and eat half a box of toaster waffles. 

Once he has sufficiently calmed down, Jughead retrieves his phone from the bottom of his bag and powers it on. At most he’s expecting a text from Archie telling him off for yelling at Veronica. 

Instead what he gets is a barrage of buzzes as several messages from Betty come through. 

His hunch while bailing out the window had been right: **_Hey, I’m popping out of class for a minute, Ms. Lovett won’t care. Can we talk now?_ **

**_Jug?_ **

**_Okay, can we talk between classes at least?_ **

The messages that take on a panicked tinge must be when she noticed they were listed as undelivered while his phone was off. **_Jug is everything okay? I can’t find you anywhere. Did you leave school already?_ **

**_Are you mad at me for not telling you about Veronica choosing the quest? It wasn’t personal, I was keeping her confidence. If it was important for you to know right now, I would have told you._ **

**_Jug, seriously, please text me back. I’m getting worried. Archie says he hasn’t heard from you either._ **

Then there is a text from Archie ( ** _dude I think betty’s looking for u_** _)_ then two missed calls, one each from Archie and Betty. 

A wave of guilt washes over him and Jughead forgoes an apology text to Betty (though he does text Archie: **_yeah no shit_** ) to call her directly. 

And now it’s his turn to be snubbed; after only two rings, he is sent right to voicemail. 

_Hi, this is Betty Cooper!_ chirps at him over the phone. _I am unavailable right now but if you leave a message and a callback number, I will get back to you as soon as I can!_ The tone grates on him, reminding Jughead of Betty’s pitch-perfect facade she uses on all the teachers and their classmates, and he hangs up. 

Then the guilt comes back and he taps the call button again. 

Not even one full ring before he is greeted with _Hi, this is Betty Cooper!_ Jughead never took Betty as one for passive aggression and he is almost impressed that she’s setting a boundary by being pissed off at him. 

“Hey, Betts, it’s Jug. Uh, well, yeah obviously it’s me, caller ID and all that.” Jughead knocks his head forward on the doorframe. _My god, you dumbass._ “Anyway, sorry about earlier, had to deal with a family thing and turned my phone off. So I guess I’ll just text you too. Okay.” 

And he does: **_Hey I’m alive, I went to go see my dad. Sorry for worrying you._ **

And he gets no response. For hours. 

He paces; he texts Archie, who says **_in the middle of something i’ll be home later,_ **which is as helpful as it is specific; he examines every fucking pixel of the Sweetwater Secrets app; he starts a load of laundry and scrubs the coffee pot; he starts to wonder if he’s losing his mind.

Jughead is prepared to get back on the bike as a search party of one when his phone finally rings, Betty’s name on the screen. 

A mixture of relief and annoyance courses through him. 

“Betts, what gives?” It comes out harsher than anticipated and Jughead knows this is why Betty’s answer is just as sharp, especially given his radio silence earlier. 

“ _What gives_ is that I’ve been with Veronica all afternoon planning how she can fulfill her quest without getting in trouble. No thanks to you,” she hisses. 

Again, if he weren’t so mad at her, Jughead would be proud of her for growing enough of a spine to yell at him. 

“What do you mean _no thanks to me,_ you made it perfectly clear that Veronica’s secrecy is more important than getting to the bottom of all of this. But if you’re intent on keeping her shady shit under wraps, then I don’t know what you want from me.” 

“I want you to _trust me,_ Juggie,” Betty says, voice cracking on his name. 

Jughead sighs. “I do trust you, but I don’t trust her. I don’t like that neither of you told me she picked quest and I really don’t like that she’s hiding something so big that she’s willing to take a risk on something that apparently required hours of logistics to pull off safely. How else am I supposed to respond to that? She’s dating my best friend, Betty, and I need to make sure Archie isn’t hurt by whatever she isn’t telling us.”

The silence on the other end of the line is deafening. And then, “I don’t have time for you to be some crusading asshole putting your nose where it doesn’t belong, Jughead.” 

“Oh but you have time for her to dress you up like Fifth Avenue Barbie,” he snaps, hearing how absurd he sounds—but at this point Jughead is so riled up he is beyond caring. 

“No, I have time to go help her on this stupid fucking quest because I am being a good friend. It’s something you should try once in a while.” 

“I _am_ being a good friend, why do you think I’m doing this?” 

“No, Jug, I’m talking about being a friend to me. Which clearly we’re not if you’re attacking me for this. This isn’t how you treat a friend, let alone…” she trails off. “I don’t care if you don’t like it, Jughead. Think what you want to think, that Veronica’s a conniving bitch keeping a big secret from Archie and that I’m enabling her and would perpetuate something that hurts someone I care about. I won’t waste my energy trying to change your mind because clearly that’s already the low opinion you have of both of us.” 

The line goes dead, and with it, Jughead’s fire. 

He is tired. Three knock-down, drag-out arguments in one day is too much. And somehow it’s the one with Betty, not his father, that has guilt clawing up his throat. He dials her back and he is sent straight to voicemail again. 

Jughead peers out the window to see a lithe silhouette in the glow of the houselights; it’s Betty, climbing down a ladder propped up beside her window. He presses call next to her name in the call log again and watches as her shadow form pulls something from her pocket, press it decisively, and replace it before sprinting off. 

His phone once again silent, Jughead knocks his head against the window frame. He types out one message before tossing it into a corner in frustration. 

**_I’m sorry. Please be careful._ **

* * *

Archie wakes to an early alarm today, hating himself for setting it last night. Practice later on such little sleep is going to be a nightmare, but he needs to brew the coffee and gulp down more than his standard half-mug without raising suspicion. 

Despite Veronica assuring him not to worry, he stayed up until he saw Betty creeping back into the Cooper house around 1am. Archie just needed to know that both she and Veronica made it home safe. The range in severity of the truths and quests over the last week nags at the back of his mind—if the intent was to out Veronica with a truth, the quest of having her break into RHS at night and merely to provide photographic proof seems way too lowkey. 

“It’s not _breaking_ and entering anyway,” Veronica had chirped. “We are allowed in this building, so we are merely _entering._ Just… after hours.” 

That didn’t make Archie feel any better. 

Soon after Betty had climbed back into her bedroom window, Veronica texted Archie. **_I hope you’re already asleep Archiekins, but letting you know I am about to join you in dreamland._ **She had attached two photos: one selfie of her and Betty in the dark gym, Veronica puckering her lips and Betty rolling her eyes, and one shot of what must be Veronica’s bedding, her knees propped up underneath the pale purple silk. 

He crashed hard after that and the alarm is shrill and painful. Once he starts the coffee pot, Archie shoves his feet into his tied sneakers and ducks out the back door. The dew soaks through his shoes and makes his grip on the ladder propped under Betty’s window slippery. 

The early alarm is also to cover Betty’s ass; he needs to be up before Alice Cooper comes downstairs and sees him carrying the ladder back to his dad’s garage. Archie is trying his best to be quiet, so he is surprised when Betty’s face pops up in the window. She must have been awake already, not startled by any noise he made—that, or she never went to sleep. 

Betty waves, mouths _thank you_ , and Archie manages to free one hand long enough to give her a thumbs up. 

When Veronica told him what her quest was, Archie tried to talk her into letting him help. “If we get caught—and it’s a big _if_ ,” Veronica said, and then quickly followed up at Archie’s panicked expression, “You could get suspended and lose your captainship. You’ll be wrecked for college apps. Betty is my best bet for an accomplice, the girl can sweet talk her way out of anything.” 

(There had been something wistful in the way Veronica talked about Betty, but Archie pushes aside the thought. Veronica has told him that he is who she wants and he trusts her. What he doesn’t trust is Jughead not to self-destruct if Veronica were to openly hit on Betty. It might be fun to watch, though.) 

And so Archie offered his help in other ways: getting Betty out undetected. 

Mission accomplished on all counts. 

Back in the kitchen, Jughead is sitting at the counter with his face practically in his bowl of cereal. Archie snags the box for himself and gulps down the coffee now that it’s a drinkable temperature. 

“You look like shit, Jug,” Archie tells him. It’s true; where Jughead does have an air of perpetual exhaustion, complete with the under-eye bags, he looks especially awful today. The constant shoveling of spoonfuls into his mouth means he is also stress eating. The second Archie finishes pouring his own bowl, Jughead grabs it back. 

“Gee, thanks Arch, you really know how to make a girl feel special.” 

Jughead is being sarcastic, but Archie does feel a bit smug given that Veronica has implied the same in sincerity, if not in as many words. Before they were interrupted by Sweetwater nonsense on Sunday, Veronica had _loudly_ implied that, in fact. 

Twice. 

Archie sips his coffee to cover his smirk. Jughead must have guessed where his brain went and flipped him off. 

“I didn’t sleep last night.” 

It takes a lot of willpower to not ask if that was because he was worried about Betty. 

Again, Jughead sees where he’s going regardless. “Talked to my dad yesterday. And then Betty and I got into a fight,” he mumbles, then eats another spoonful to cover—poorly—how morose he looks about it. 

Not quite the answer Archie was expecting, but he feels pride for hitting the nail on the head. He’ll have to tell Ronnie about it later. 

“Oh, you fought about her helping Veronica break into school?” 

Jughead’s eyes bug out. “ _That’s_ what the quest was?” 

Oh. Maybe he shouldn’t tell Ronnie about this later, not if Jughead isn’t supposed to know what happened last night. Archie grunts a noncommittal noise through his swig of coffee. 

“Well, then, yeah technically I guess that’s what it was about. We argued about Veronica.” 

Archie furrows his brow, not sure he likes the direction this is going. “You and Betty got into a fight about _Veronica_? Why?” He grips the handle of his Andrews Construction mug to ground himself for the answer, which he can just tell he isn’t going to like. 

To his credit, Jughead looks chagrined when he admits, “She was being so cagey about the truth option and it felt like they both were purposely hiding something that might hurt you.” 

So, a pretty traditional move on Jughead’s part: demonstrating care, but in the most prickly way possible. 

“Jughead, you dumbass. Ronnie and I talked yesterday and she explained what she was worried about. And before you ask, no I’m not telling you. It’s not your business unless she wants it to be. You owe Betty an apology.” 

Jughead hangs his head and grumbles, “Yeah I know I do. She’s still not answering me.” 

“I don’t blame her,” Archie snorts. 

Yes, he and Veronica _had_ talked about her Sweetwater debacle yesterday. The conversation had started with Veronica kissing him good morning and then looking at him evenly to say, “It’s nothing bad but I need to tell you something after school.” And then Archie proceeded to be scared shitless the entire day. Thankfully it’s a by-week for football and they have days off from practice, so he could meet her in the parking lot right after the last bell. 

“Veronica, is everything okay? You’re freaking me out a bit, here.” 

“Yes, yeah, it’s okay.” The tears welling in her eyes had betrayed her, but Archie nodded, letting her continue. “I’m, um—I want you to know that—that I’m bisexual, Archie.” 

She then chewed on her lip, which was an utterly distracting thing to do when she had said something pretty big just before. Archie had to tear his eyes away from where the pressure of her teeth turned her bottom lip white. “Um,” he said on an exhale. “Okay. That means you like girls too, right?”

“Pretty much.” Veronica still looked nervous and it had taken Archie a few moments to realize she was nervous about _him,_ about his reaction. 

“I mean, Ronnie,” he said. “I don’t care. I like you, and you like me, and we’re riding this where it takes us, right?” 

Then, he had been pretty sure that the tears in her eyes were from relief. 

“I’m really happy you felt safe to tell me,” Archie had said, leaning forward to press a kiss to her temple. “But can I ask why now? You seemed like you didn’t really want to say anything.” 

She flushed, bit her lip again; Archie had to stop himself from kissing her to bite that lip for himself. 

“Because I’m the one Ginger is hooking up with in her Sweetwater photos and I’m worried that’s what my truth will be, and I didn’t want you to find out like that.” 

It had been a lot of information process and Archie hated himself for his first, lizard-brain reaction being, _fuck that’s hot._

As though she read his mind (and he’s still not convinced she _can’t_ ), Veronica leveled him with a look. “If you say that’s hot, I am getting out of this car.” 

It was his turn to flush and bite his lip. He took two measured breaths before answering. “Whoever runs that app is such a dick.” 

Veronica cupped his cheek in her hand and smiled. “They are.” She winked. “Okay now you can say that’s hot.” 

He hadn’t said that, but only because the next dumb lizard-brain thing had popped right out of his mouth, “Does that mean we can talk about hot girls together now?” 

She had smacked him affectionately before telling him that _yes we can_. 

Veronica had also told Archie that she wanted to control who knew and how they found out—hence taking the quest. He understood, and this is why he stares down Jughead right now. 

Not that he needs to; Betty must have really laid into him if he is this visibly upset about it. 

Jughead shrinks back from Archie’s expression, but Archie just shrugs. “Your mess to fix, man.” 

He has faith that Jughead _will_ of course, but it’s more a matter of how long it takes him to figure out the right way to do so. For someone so intelligent and versed in writing, Jughead is surprisingly lacking in his communication skills. 

They drag their exhausted asses into the truck and over to school, each clinging to their coffee like a life raft. Briefly, Archie wonders if this is how tired Jughead feels all the time. 

Veronica has texted by the time he parks and pulls his phone out, elbowing Jughead to jolt him back to the present. Jughead punches him in return, but there’s no weight behind it. 

**_Betty and I are in the student lounge, so come by for morning sugar and the intel,_ **with kiss and coffee emojis. 

**_jug + i just pulled in, be there in a few_ **

No sooner has the message sent than Veronica calls. “Hey, you,” Archie says with affection. Beside him, Jughead scoffs, and Archie shoves him. 

Unfortunately for him, Veronica cuts to the chase. “Tell the Bert to your Ernie that he’s unwelcome until he apologizes for making Betty cry. Otherwise he can go elsewhere for his coffee.” 

In the few moments it takes for this to process in Archie’s mind, Jughead has outpaced him. He jogs a few steps and stops Jughead by placing a hand on his shoulder, then rounds on him. “Jug, you _made her cry?_ What the hell, man?”

He seems bewildered. “ _What?_ No I didn’t! She was yelling at me sure, but she wasn’t crying, I swear.” 

Archie raises his eyebrows. “Veronica says you made her cry.” 

“I _didn’t,”_ Jughead panics. 

_Oh Jug,_ Archie sighs. He waits a few beats to see if Jughead will get there on his own. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep more than the lack of reading cues, but he doesn’t. “Dude, just because she didn’t cry while you were yelling at each other doesn’t mean she didn’t cry about it after. Come _on._ ” 

A look of comprehension dawns on him before it crumples into misery. “I made her cry?” 

Archie pats him on the shoulder awkwardly. 

Despite Veronica’s explicit instructions, from the look on Betty’s face, Archie gets the feeling he fucked up by not dragging Jughead to the student lounge with him. She, too, has the bags under her eyes that they all do but she perked up slightly when Archie came in—and he knows it wasn’t actually _for_ him by the way her gaze slides right past him and to the empty space by his side. 

“Hi, baby,” Veronica says, leaning up for the kiss he initiates. 

Archie sits in the chair perpendicular to Betty after taking his coffee cup from Veronica. He inclines his head, wanting to make sure Betty can hear without too much flak from Veronica. “Jug says he’ll find you later, okay? I don’t think he wanted an audience.” 

She swallows but nods, seemingly placated but still looking sad.

“Everything, uh, go alright last night?” Archie isn’t sure how he’s supposed to ask about his girlfriend and best friend breaking into the school at night while _at school_ , but he hasn’t heard anything. 

Veronica nods. “The Raven and Dove flew in, landed, and flew out with no issue.” 

“How were you supposed to prove to them you did it? Are you safe from them—” he has to stop himself from saying _outing you_ in this setting “—screwing you over?” 

Another nod, “Technically safe but I don’t trust these assholes as far as I can throw them. They updated the app again so the truth or quest choice form also includes a file upload. I had to take a couple of timestamped selfies from key locations in the building.” 

“Do I want to know how you pulled this off?” 

Betty finally speaks up on this one. “Maintain your plausible deniability, please, Arch.” 

Fair enough, he thinks. Veronica tucks herself under his arm, sipping from her coffee with heavy eyes. Archie can see the thin lines of her eye makeup flutter with her efforts to keep them open. There isn’t much time before the bell, but he smooths his palm over her hair and murmurs, “I got you, just rest until the bell.” 

Her pleased exhale warms his belly and Archie can only tell he has a dopey expression on his face from Betty’s silent laughter. 

“You’re a sap, Archie Andrews,” Betty whispers. 

“Worse things to be,” he shrugs. He didn’t _mean_ for it to comment on Jug’s idiocy, but when Betty purses her lips and nods, Archie can tell that’s where her mind went. “He feels like shit, for what it’s worth.” 

She nods, seeming to mull it over and then accept it as truth. “Okay.” 

The day is an impossible slog. Archie is sluggish in class, to the point where Señora Shapely raises her voice to break him out of his stupor. “ _Disculpe,_ Señor Andrews. I expect you to stay awake in my class.”

Clouds overtake the sky and the cool fall weather sets in, so he and Veronica eat lunch in the student lounge. He wolfs down a few slices of pizza, but she merely pokes at her salad. Archie nudges his pudding cup her way. 

“Sugar might help perk you up for a bit.” 

Her grateful smile is almost too much to bear, so he leans in to kiss her temple. 

Jughead and Betty are noticeably absent; Jughead was nowhere to be seen in the cafeteria line and Veronica says she hasn’t seen Betty since first period. For both their sake, Archie hopes they are having it out in the newspaper office. 

With a devious look, after the bell, Veronica drags them past that doorway to peer in; Jughead is pacing around the room, wringing his beanie in his hands, and Betty sits in a desk chair with her knees tucked up beneath her chin. Betty must catch their movement through the window but Archie doesn’t duck as quickly as Veronica. She narrows her eyes at him and even from yards away and through a closed door, Archie can feel the burn of her annoyance. 

Giggling, Veronica yanks him away and down the hall. “I hope she read him the riot act for yesterday.” 

“I already did this morning,” Archie tells her. “He is having a very shitty day.” 

Veronica hums. “Good, he needs to get his head out of his ass where Betty is concerned.” 

Archie has to agree. 

Meeting Veronica after practice is Archie’s new favorite habit. 

Practice, despite the off-week, was brutal and made all the worse for how exhausted he feels. The team’s morale is still low after Reggie’s bullshit at the game and Coach Clayton seems to think the solution is to run them ragged until they don’t have the energy to grumble and theorize about it in the locker rooms. 

It’s not ineffective. 

As they all shuffle out of the gym, Archie sees Veronica waiting for him on the bleachers and some of his energy returns. She greets him with a thorough kiss and a couple of his teammates wolf-whistle on their way past. 

Veronica doesn’t seem to mind so he doesn’t bother telling them off and just holds her tight until he picks her up a few inches off the ground to kiss back with all the force he can muster. 

She looks a bit stunned when he puts her down a few minutes later and Archie tries to resist his smug response; he fails, clearly, when Veronica rolls her eyes and whacks him on the chest, “Don’t get a big head, baby.” 

There’s a dirty joke to be made but Archie doesn’t have the brain power to get there. 

Veronica catches his drift and raises an eyebrow. “Think anybody’s at your house?” 

Fred won’t be, he knows, but Jughead is a toss-up. Archie wants to ask the same about Veronica’s home, but gets the feeling that would kill the vibe. For as much as they are opening up to each other, he can tell that Veronica’s family is a sore subject. After so many years of seeing Jughead grapple with his own family troubles, Archie knows better than to press. She’ll tell him when she’s ready. 

And right now Veronica seems ready for something else altogether. 

They caravan back to Elm Street and Archie bursts through the back door with Veronica already kissing down his neck. 

“Hey, Jug?” he shouts, crossing his fingers for no answer. 

When there’s silence, Archie lifts Veronica up until she can lock her legs around his waist and runs his hands up under her shirt until he can wriggle his way beneath her sports bra and palm at one breast. The strangled noise she makes in response is satisfying and has him rolling his hips into hers. They stumble their way up the stairs and Archie is prepared to deposit her on his bed and peel off her layers but Veronica clearly has other plans. 

She pushes him up against his closed bedroom door and rakes her nails down his chest. He groans at the sensation and then swears when Veronica undoes his jeans and sinks to her knees. “Christ, Ronnie,” he moans. 

“Shh,” she clucks, guiding his hands into her hair and then her mouth is on him and he can’t think straight anymore. 

Thursday morning brings them all to The Blue and Gold, where Archie focuses only on his doughnut and on Veronica perched in his lap. Veronica is spitballing Sweetwater theories with Betty and Jughead, who seem less fraught than yesterday but are awkwardly, decidedly standing on opposite sides of the room. 

As the bell is supposed to ring, the loudspeaker crackles with Principal Weatherbee’s booming voice. “Attention, Riverdale High. It has come to my attention that a person or persons accessed the school after hours this week and broke into the administrative offices. Important items are now missing from the office.” 

Jughead whips around to glance between Betty and Veronica. Archie turns sharply to Veronica in his lap, whose face is deathly pale. Across the room, Betty’s eyes are wide with panic. 

“Guys,” Archie hisses. “You didn’t tell me about that part of the quest.” 

Weatherbee continues, “Whoever is the culprit has 24 hours to come forward and return the stolen items, with no questions. Otherwise, Friday morning, we will commence with locker searches for the entire student body.” His announcement ends with the shrill morning bell. 

Veronica looks aghast. “Archie, I swear that _wasn’t_ part of the quest. It was just the photo proof like I said.” 

Betty’s voice is brittle, sharp. “They’re going to pin it on us. That’s why the quest itself was so easy.” 

“Was one of the photo requirements Weatherbee’s office?” Jughead asks, with urgency in his voice. 

Unable to speak, Veronica just nods. 

Archie sighs and rubs a reassuring hand on her back. “Fuck.” 

Where yesterday crawled by, today it feels like Archie blinked and the day was over. The team has weight lifting today—technically optional during this by-week but strongly encouraged to attend, and therefore mandatory for him as a captain, much as he wants to go home and crash—and he is just grabbing his things to head to the locker room when Jughead skids to a stop beside him, out of breath. 

“Arch,” he says in a low voice, fear and panic so obvious it raises the hairs on the back of Archie’s neck. “I have a big fucking problem.” 

Archie blanches. “What’s the matter?” 

Jughead hands him a heavy piece of cardstock, with writing in bright gold script: _A SIDE QUEST FOR RIVERDALE’S VERY OWN SERPENT PRINCE_

There’s nothing else on the card, and Archie looks up at Jughead, “What’s this mean?” 

“It means,” Jughead says, his words strained and whispered, “It means there is now something illegal in my locker that will be caught during locker searches tomorrow when nobody goes to Weatherbee about the break-in.” 

For the second time that day, Archie swears _fuck_ on a sigh. He lowers his voice, “How illegal are we talking?” 

Jughead shakes his head and Archie’s stomach twists in knots. “Too illegal to talk about right now and too illegal for me to casually slip into my backpack and carry around looking for a place to put it.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“I don’t _know,_ Arch, that’s why I’m talking to you right now,” Jughead says frantically. Lately, though, _Betty_ has been Jughead’s go-to, which makes Archie realize that Jughead is already resigned to their least preferable option. The knots in his stomach tighten. 

“I think we’ve gotta go to your dad, Jug.” 

What little color was left in Jughead’s face disappears. 

“Fuck,” he says weakly. “Fuck. Okay, yeah. That’s—” Jughead gulps and Archie swears he can see tears gathering in his eyes, all stoicism lost “—that’s probably the best option. Only option really.” 

Nodding, Archie dumps most of the notebooks out of his backpack. “Is this big enough for now?” 

When Jughead confirms that it is, they weave through the stragglers on the way out of the building to get to his locker. There isn’t anyone around to notice them acting suspicious but Archie straightens up and tries to use most of his body to block the opening. Jughead spins open the lock and cracks the door just far enough for Archie to peer in. 

Archie assumed it would be bad—Jughead wouldn’t be this spooked over nothing—but he hadn’t guessed it would be _this bad._ “Jug, is that—” 

“Well it’s certainly not powdered sugar, Archie,” he hisses. “Can you please open your bag and hurry the fuck up?” Archie does as he’s told and Jughead deposits the duct tape wrapped plastic bag of what he assumes is cocaine into his open backpack. He zips it up quickly and Jughead slams the locker door shut. 

“Whoever the fuck this is,” Jughead seethes as they sprint as inconspicuously as possible down the halls as possible, “is going to pay. That would have gotten me arrested tomorrow if it were still in my locker. What the _fuck.”_

What the fuck indeed, Archie thinks, turning the key in the truck and peeling out of the Riverdale High parking lot. His heartbeat thunders in his ears, now realizing that they could both be arrested with what is zipped unceremoniously into his aging Jansport. They’re about to hand a pack of cocaine over to Jughead’s apparently-criminal father who presumably will know what to do about it _without_ getting arrested. 

Mr. Jones had always been a bit rough around the edges for as long as Archie and Jughead have been friends, but the stark reality of pairing him with a biker gang that commits real crime is a sharp pain in his chest. And yet what he feels right now probably isn’t even a fraction of what Jughead has been feeling for the last week. 

His heart aches for his best friend over the shit hand he’s been dealt his whole life. Archie can’t quite figure out what to say, though, and instead asks, “Should we go to Sunnyside, or…?” 

Jughead thuds his head against the headrest. “No, go to the Whyte Wyrm.” 

Archie isn’t too familiar with the south side of Riverdale—mostly how to get to Jug’s dad’s place in Sunnyside and to wherever his own dad had job sites growing up. He doesn’t want to ask Jug for directions and is relieved when he motions for a left turn once they cross over the proverbial and literal dividing line of the train tracks. 

Archie also doesn’t want to think about how or why Jughead knows the way to a bar he isn’t old enough to get into. 

“Used to pick him up from here sometimes, when he bothered calling for a ride,” Jughead supplies, unbidden. 

_Here_ is a dingy building at the end of a dirt road, the brick walls full of various tags and taunts, windows so grimey they barely look like glass, and with an aged neon sign proclaiming its name with the H and R bulbs out. The front door has a massive green snake painted on it. 

“Well that explains things,” Jughead says under his breath. 

Archie blows air out through his nose, assessing the situation. “Do we both go in?” 

“No,” Jughead shakes his head. “I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb enough as it is. Just stay here with the engine running and keep this under your seat.” He hands Archie the bag contraband and then, with the expression of a man off to war, leaves the truck cab and walks toward the door. 

When he’s been inside for seven minutes, per the clock on the dash, Archie starts to get nervous. If FP weren’t there, Jug would have come right back out. If he _is_ there, would it take this long to explain and get him to come outside? 

Just as Archie is debating whether to call Jughead or go in after him, the door to the bar swings open with force. 

He hasn’t seen FP Jones in a while—maybe freshman year?—but Archie does not remember him ever looking this scary. Looking like—well, looking like the head of a gang. 

Behind him, shoulders hunched to his ears and eyes trained on the ground, Jughead walks quickly to keep up with his dad, who is heading directly to Archie’s truck with a menacing expression. He cranks the window down and waits until they’re within earshot to call out softly, “You good, Jug?” 

Jughead makes a face at him, as if to say _what the hell do you think?_ Fair enough. They _are_ about to ask his criminal father to take a brick of cocaine off their hands. 

“I didn’t know prettyboy football players played in these big leagues, carrot top.” The blow of FP’s sharp voice is softened only by the use of a childhood nickname he had all but forgotten about until now. Both of Jug’s parents used to call him that—though his mom was gone long before Archie grew out of the name. Or maybe it’s just that Jughead switched to coming over by himself as soon as he was deemed old enough to make the walk. 

Archie gulps. “Hey, Mr. Jones.” 

He is met with a raised eyebrow. “I think you’re old enough to quit calling me _Mr. Jones,_ Archie. Especially when you’re holding onto what you’ve got. You two wanna explain how you _wound up_ with what you’ve got?” 

“I told you, Dad,” Jughead says. Archie can tell by the sound of his voice that Jughead is about two seconds away from losing it. “Someone at school is targeting a bunch of people and the same day Weatherbee announces locker searches to track down something stolen, this magically appears in my locker.” 

He motions for Archie to pass over the bag through the window and FP tugs open the zipper, then lets out a low whistle. 

“What Northside teenager knows how to get that much coke,” FP mutters. He must only mean to talk to himself because when he follows up with, “none of our guys would ever sell that much to a kid,” he seems to catch himself. 

Archie sees the exact moment Jughead processes what his dad is saying; the reality that his father not only deals heavy duty drugs but also deals them to kids in their school has his jaw slack and his eyes dark with anger. 

“Can you take it or not,” Jughead asks through gritted teeth. 

“Yeah, yeah.” FP waves him off, still thinking. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“Don’t _worry_ about—” Jughead looks ready to explode and Archie raises his hand in a motion telling him to take it easy. The last thing they need is for a shouting match to draw attention to them outside of the bar. 

Either unhearing or ignoring it altogether, FP tucks the bag into his inner jacket pocket and claps a hand on Jughead’s shoulder. “Boy, I don’t like that someone is pulling shit to try and get you arrested. I’ll see what I can unearth, us snakes know how to dig around.” 

They’re left in silence, Jughead staring down at Archie’s empty backpack in his hand. 

.

.

.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so glad people are enjoying this world! your kind comments mean the world to me, and I'm excited to reread and respond to you all! if you're inclined to continue telling me what you like, I would love to hear it!


	4. archie, 12:55pm: part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: this will be a fun au i can do in, like, 4 parts  
> also me: maybe i should split chapters in half, so it's not too unwieldy  
> me again: .....this chapter half is still unwieldy 
> 
> as such, you can only reread 18.9k so many times without it blurring together, so. typos are probably there. they add character.

_I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down_

* * *

Veronica is deadass exhausted. It is a good thing there isn’t a Bulldogs game tonight because she thinks if she had to perform, there is a very good chance she might fall asleep right on top of the pyramid. 

She’s not the only one on the verge of sleep that morning; Archie is cradling a coffee cup like it might save his life, Betty surreptitiously pinches her thigh every few minutes to jolt her awake, and Jughead, tentatively back in Veronica’s good graces at Archie’s insistence, has moved onto his second doughnut and second large cup of coffee. 

They are a sorry excuse for teens on the verge of the weekend with—ostensibly—no responsibilities. Veronica could only stomach a few minutes in the student lounge of their classmates’ loud gossip over the locker searches and their party plans for the evening before feeling like she may end up with her con leche all over her patent leather kitten heels. 

So she grabs Archie by the elbow and guides them over to the newspaper office, putting aside her frustrations with Jughead and his idiocy regarding Betty in order for a reprieve. 

And to have more company in their collective, anxious misery. 

All their current under eye circles rival Jughead’s on a normal day and Veronica had always been morbidly curious to know what he might look like on a bad day. Now she knows.

He might have looked worse if he were half dead, Veronica thinks with an unbidden pang of sympathy. There’s the smallest of half smiles on his face that lightens it up, directed at Betty and her mug of coffee, both situated far closer to him than the days prior. 

If Veronica isn’t mistaken, Betty glances at him between quiet smiles into her coffee under his gaze. 

“How are we on this fine morning,” Veronica chirps, surprising the two of them. Unlike the last time, they don’t put a hundred feet between them—they’re not exactly on top of each other right now, but close enough that Betty goes pink at Veronica’s arched eyebrow. “Everybody sleep well with this axe hanging over our heads? No? Do we think anybody rigged a jack-in-the-box surprise for Weatherbee in their locker? My money’s on Reggie.” 

She clocks a dark, nervous look exchanged between Archie and Jughead and purses her lips. “Something to share with the class, you two?” 

Archie, bless him, looks like a deer in headlights and opens his mouth—whether to confirm nor deny, Veronica isn’t sure because Jughead cuts him off sharply. “We’re peachy fucking keen over here, Veronica.” 

Even Betty looks surprised, concern clouding her expression, but their attentions are called away to Weatherbee on the loudspeaker. “All students are to report to the hallways and be present at their lockers for administrative search.” They trudge out, tense, and Veronica kisses Archie before the four of them split ways alphabetically. Veronica and Jughead keep their distance, but with only two lockers between them, it is still remarkably easy to give him an evil eye. 

“Will you knock it off,” he mutters. “I’ve apologized to Betty and I _am_ sorry that I was an ass about you, but can you at least put the claws away while we all wait for our lives to be ruined again by anonymous dickheads on a power trip?” 

_Our lives_ sticks at the back of her throat. “You aren’t who can potentially go down for this Weatherbee thing,” Veronica hisses. “What are you so worried about?” 

His jaw tics and Veronica is now much more interested in what that look between him and Archie was about. She is about to press on it when Midge Klump arrives at her locker between them and leans against it, the zippers on her backpack clicking loudly against the metal. “Fun, morning, huh,” she asks with a snap of her gum. “Wonder what the Sweetwater dicks did now.” 

Veronica remembers that Midge was the year’s first Sweetwater target and that the three of them are now in the same uniquely terrible boat.

Jughead sighs from the other side of Midge. “Who the fuck knows.” 

Midge clucks in sympathy. “Welcome to the worst club in the school, lab partner.” She turns to Veronica, resting her shoulder against her locker. “I should extend the same welcome to you. This whole quest thing is bananas. I’m not sure which I would have chosen if I’d had the option.” 

Therein lies the problem, Veronica says to herself. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Get outed to the entire school before you’re ready, or break into school and go down for private school documents being stolen; Jughead had scoffed at the choice and hell rained down as a result; Midge hadn’t been given a choice and had her privacy violated in even more a vicious way than Jughead, or Ginger, or Veronica. 

She doesn’t know Midge particularly well, but Veronica is overcome with the urge to hug her. Midge must recognize some trademark Sweetwater-victim-tell in her expression and reaches a hand out to squeeze Veronica’s forearm. 

Weatherbee, two unnamed people Veronica thinks might be school board members, and the head of maintenance, carrying bolt cutters, trudge down the hall. The bolt cutters are an ominous, if not a bit overdramatic, presence. She hopes that nobody is stupid enough to prompt their use, unless somebody decided to bail on school for fear of what might be discovered. 

Then again, advanced warning means anybody harboring shit unrelated to Sweetwater had time to relocate—surely Weatherbee must know this. The obvious move would have been to search lockers first thing yesterday. 

Which means Weatherbee must have some inkling that the theft is Sweetwater related and could be planted anywhere and is, once more, doing fuck-all about it. 

She is so mad she could scream. 

The group is methodically making their way down the hall and when they stop in front of Jughead’s locker, he looks paper-white and ready to pass out. 

“Don’t think, Mr. Jones,” Weatherbee starts, “that certain aspects of your family’s credibility has not made its way to our office. I’ll be keeping my eye on you.” Veronica seethes on his behalf—of all the belittling things to say, to somebody who has always kept his head down (even without keeping his mouth shut) and does well in his classes and just so happens to be screwed in the family department, where the fuck does he get off—

Mr. Svenson looks apologetic as Weatherbee tells him to snap Jughead’s lock, despite Jughead already having dialed half his combination. He looks inexplicably relieved, though, when all of his belongings are dumped onto the floor and his broken lock deposited in his hand. 

By the time they get through Midge’s locker, Veronica is acutely aware of how poorly this could go. She hadn’t really let herself worry before now, too panicked to even let those thoughts fully form. She _is_ the one who broke into school and deserves the treatment Jughead received, but Weatherbee is polite and gracious when she spins open her lock and merely rifles through her binders before carrying on. 

Once they’re a few spots down, Veronica joins Jughead where he sits on the ground among his things, back resting on the open locker door. He still looks shaky. 

“They put something in your locker yesterday, didn’t they?” 

Jughead turns his head, nodding silently. 

“How bad?” 

He swallows hard. “You don’t want to know.” 

Veronica pats him on the shoulder, awkward but hopefully with her intent known, and stays with him until the bell rings. 

Lunch is a solemn, nervous affair. The four of them bring their trays bagged lunches into the Blue & Gold and sit in silence but for the rather loud chewing from Archie and Jughead. Veronica is still too sick from nerves to eat more than a few bites and Betty looks like she might throw up altogether. 

Veronica has maneuvered her seat so she can kick up her feet in Archie’s lap and the light circles he rubs on her ankle bone help her slowly return to some semblance of equilibrium. She is dying to know what went down with the mysterious surprise in Jughead’s locker yesterday, but Jughead is a definite no-go and Betty appears to have no clue anything happened at all. 

She is sure, though, that Archie helped, good friend that he is, but knows better than to ask now, given the company and negative aura of the room. 

Betty rests her chin on her propped elbow which slips unceremoniously as she startles into and out of sleep, resulting in her water bottle clattering to the ground. 

“B,” Veronica says, “I think you should just go home. There’s no use in being in class when you’re barely upright, and you can use that time to catch up on sleep.” 

Her friend shakes her head and rolls her neck, stretching to wake herself up. “You know I can’t. For one, Alice is like a shark with blood in the water and will somehow know I’ve left school, and for the other, I can’t waste time that could be used to figure out who is behind Sweetwater Secrets.” 

Veronica raises her eyebrows. “Does that mean you’re planning to skip class anyway and hole up in here?” 

Betty looks sheepish. “Maybe.” 

“Good on you,” she smirks. Veronica cuts a glance over to Jughead, who has paused in his chewing, and notices his neck looking a bit red. “Jughead,” she calls out. “You’re a repeat offender of ditching class. Will you be sleuthing in here all afternoon too?” A glance to Betty shows her looking up in interest. _God,_ teasing them is fun. 

“I skipped too much this week already,” he mumbles, looking thoroughly disappointed to miss out on solo, uninterrupted Betty-time. 

Archie taps her ankle lightly, a warning to leave them alone. She meets his eye and winks, but drops the topic. 

“Well I think,” Veronica declares, in a new tone, “that our narrow escape entitles us to some celebration. Pop’s shakes on me tonight?” 

Archie and Betty nod, smiles growing on both faces, but Jughead’s ‘fuck I’m losing out on time with Betty’ face droops even more. More mumbling: “I’ve got a G&G campaign night.” 

They all whip around to stare at him. Archie looks shocked. “You’re going to spend _more_ time on the source of all this quest shit? How do we know one of those guys isn’t behind this?” 

“All the more reason he should go,” Betty answers for him. 

Veronica sees Jughead beam at Betty before schooling his face. “And,” he continues, “If nothing else, Dilton is a master conspiracy theorist but might come up with something so off the walls it actually helps.” 

Archie snorts. “Fair enough. I’ve somehow had him in history class every single year and he never fails to sound completely bonkers.” 

Veronica claps her hands. “Well then, it’ll be us three for the shakes.” 

She is levelled with a look from Betty. “I am _not_ being your third wheel.” She waves her hand at Veronica’s legs, where Archie’s hands have moved higher up without her noticing. He squeezes just above her knee and grins. Betty _hmphs_ pointedly. “You two have fun, I’ll just be all by my lonesome eating a sad salad with Alice, and Hal if he decides to show up for once.” 

If possible, Jughead’s kicked puppy look gets even more pathetic. 

They meet for their regular parking lot rendezvous after the final bell and it’s not until Archie’s hand is firmly up her shirt that Veronica realizes— 

“We haven’t gone on a date yet!” 

Archie pulls back, startled by her voice, but does not remove his hand. 

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah I guess you’re right.” He hesitates. “Um... does tonight count as one? Or do you want to go somewhere besides a diner that everybody goes to at least once a week?” 

She hums, thinking. “Honestly, ever since I mentioned shakes I’ve been dying for a black-and-white. So, next time you can wow me, lover boy. Tonight just kiss me and buy me some fries.” 

Archie lightly scrapes his nails below the band of her bra and kisses under her jaw. “Can do, Ronnie.” He snaps open her bra and then there’s no more talking. 

Their date may be at Pop’s, where Veronica has been dozens of times since moving to Riverdale, but it’s still their _first_ date, so she puts in the extra effort. She eyeballs a couple of her Manhattan-era minidresses from where they hang at the far right of the closet, but thinks better of it. Maybe for the proper date. Tonight, she settles for a Manhattan-era pair of heeled, over-the-knee boots with skinny jeans and a (very tight, sue her) black top. It’s just the right mix of her two lifestyles, not unlike the way she dolled up Betty earlier in the week. 

There’s nothing wrong with spicing up your usual fair. 

(Most specifically in Betty’s closet and the way she _knows_ she wanted some extra attention from Jughead. But Veronica still loves to throw in some of her party girl elements amidst her toned-down Riverdale wear.) 

(She might be wearing a camisole under the tight sheer top, versus a club night where she would have left it at just a bralette, but she has a feeling this will do the trick just as well.) 

She reaches for her keys on her way out when two things stop her: one, a text from Archie reading **_might not be a proper date but I’m picking you up anyway. see u in 5?_** _,_ and the other, her father opening the door. 

They both startle at the other’s immediate presence, but Daddy’s eyes narrow. “Mija, where are you going?” The _in that outfit_ is unspoken but crystal clear. 

_Tell him you have a date with your boyfriend, tell him you have a boyfriend who is a perfect gentleman and is picking you up. Tell him, it’s fine._

_“_ Grabbing dinner with friends at Pop’s, Daddy.” She shrugs her coat closed a bit further. “We agreed to dress up a little for fun, since it’s still the fanciest place in town.” 

Her father looks like he believes her, but also looks like he’s about to tell her to go change. “Put on something more appropriate and take off those shoes, mija. You’ll have dinner with your mother and I tonight, it’s been too long since we all sat down to eat as a family.” 

_Gee, whose fault is that,_ Veronica wants to snap back. The irritation is quickly usurped by disappointment and the telltale burning in her eyes that she is about to cry. She had ditched her whiny _give me what I want_ voice long ago, but Veronica feels so gutted by the idea of missing this date with Archie that she opens her mouth to use it anyway. “Daddy, _please—”_

Her mother, who Veronica hadn’t even realized was home, emerges from the bedroom to her rescue. “Hiram, sweetie, let Veronica spend time with her friends. It’s a Friday night and they’re seniors. They only have so much time left together.” Well, that sentiment certainly doesn’t help the tears welling up, but the combination does the trick for her father. 

“Very well,” he assents. “Tomorrow, though, we eat as a family.” 

“Yes, Daddy.” He walks past her and gives her mom the briefest of kisses on the cheek, so quick it barely happened, and closes the office door behind him. “Thank you, Mami,” Veronica whispers. 

Her mother gives her a small, almost sad smile. “Go have fun, mija. Do you want some money for dinner? I know Pop prefers cash.” 

Sometimes Veronica forgets her mother grew up here, that she knows the ins and outs of the town. She so rarely shows it. 

“No, it’s okay, but thank you.” 

There’s a shrewd look. Veronica should have just taken the money and shut up, at least covered the tip when she knows Archie will insist on paying. “I ran into Alice Cooper at the store the other day, so I happen to know Betty is grounded and probably not on her way to Pop’s right now.” 

The same fleeting thought: _Tell her your boyfriend is picking you up, tell her you like him a lot and he’s adorable and sweet. Ask her if you can watch a movie later like old times and gush about him._

She can manage the half truth, still so nervous about the fragility of this home life. “I have a date, Mami. He’s picking me up.” 

Hermione looks pleased with herself for sussing it out. “Take your car keys anyway, love, that way he doesn’t ask who drove you.”

The rush of gratitude she feels has Veronica bounding over to hug her mother, and sighs happily in the comfort of it when she wraps her arms around her. She even strokes her hair briefly, like when Veronica was little. 

“I love you,” Veronica murmurs. 

“Love you, too, mija.” Mami shoos her away. “Go see your _friend._ Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” 

Veronica raises an eyebrow. She’s seen her mother’s high school photos; she has the distinct impression that the list of things she wouldn’t do is on the shorter side. 

Her mother winks as Veronica closes the door behind her with a wave. 

As predicted, Archie’s jaw goes slack when Veronica slides into the front seat of his truck. 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” he breathes out before capturing her in a hard kiss. It’s not as frenzied as their usual car makeouts, but no less intense. He plays with the collar of her coat to pull it aside and reveal more of her top. He groans. “You’re killing me, Ronnie.” 

“That was the idea,” she chirps. “Hands to yourself, Andrews, you’ve got ice cream to buy me.”

He does not keep his hands to himself, thankfully, but his palm stays in a mostly respectful location mid-thigh while his pointer finger rubs absentmindedly on the inner seam. It sends a delicious shiver up her spine. 

Veronica has been on her fair share of dates, with varying degrees of formality. None of them hold a candle to sitting across from Archie Andrews in a booth at Pop’s in the middle of the Friday evening rush. It’s better this way, she realizes, to be able to look at him while they talk, even if cozying into a corner booth would have allowed her to get him back for touching her thigh the whole drive and to breathe in the scent of his woodsy aftershave and feel what looks like the softest possible fabric of his henley. 

But it’s so much better; they talk about all the normal things they haven’t been able to with their days full of their mutual best friends’ quest for (rightful) vengeance, homework, sports practices, and navigating family issues. Archie’s music preferences, for listening and playing, (“I mean, _yeah,_ everybody learns to play Wonderwall but I don’t actually _enjoy it”)_ Veronica’s secret reality tv obsession (Archie also admits he watched soap operas when he was home sick as a kid), childhood pets (Archie’s family dog Vegas only died freshman year, Veronica grew up with her mother’s cat Pyewacket who died when she was in middle school), rankings of Halloween candy (Snickers for Veronica, peanut M&Ms for Archie), college thoughts (Veronica plans to hit the major Ivies, but fell in love with central New York liberal arts college, Archie still has no idea what he wants to do about his handful of D3 football offers besides gently ignoring them). 

It’s nice. It’s _fun._ Archie is fun to talk to and play footsie with under the table and to toss cold french fries at when he teases her about never learning to ride a bike (“It’s Manhattan, Archie, there was no point!”). 

He’s fun and sweet and _god_ he’s a good kisser, too. She relishes in it when they are back in the truck and have pulled off to a rather deserted roadside shoulder to avoid the neon glow of the signs at Pop’s. 

“Should we—” Archie breathes between bruising kisses “—go home?”

Veronica’s head is buzzing too much to process. “Hmm?” 

“Should we go someplace—” he punctuates his words with a not-so-gentle squeeze of her ass “—with a bed.” 

_Should they?_ she asks herself. Veronica feels happy and confident with where things stand and while she didn’t specifically think the night would end with a _literal_ bang... 

“Yes, please,” she pants out when he brushes his hand over her chest. 

Unlike the other day, Archie doesn’t speed their way back to Elm Street, rather taking his time to wind Veronica up with more purposeful passes of his fingers up her thighs and drugging kisses at each stop sign. But the time they’re pulling into his garage, Veronica feels like she might combust. He’s not the only one parke in the driveway so he whispers to wait for a second while he checks inside for any embarrassing obstacles. 

“Coast is clear,” he murmurs in her ear after yanking her inside. 

They tiptoe up the stairs and Archie carefully shuts his door without the latch making even a whisper. The moment it closes, they are on each other; Veronica grasps the short hairs at the nape of his neck while hiking one leg up around his hip, which pauses his lips on her neck for a groan and a thrust against her. 

Archie focuses on her upper half while she ventures south—he whips her shirt off and pulls down the straps of her camisole and bra until the cold air hits her nipples just before his hot mouth laves over one; Veronica pops open his jeans and palms him over his boxer briefs, relishing in the way he jumps to attention at her touch. When his large palms splay across her hips and push her backwards toward the bed, she shivers at how one touch can be so rough and delicate at the same time. She bounces backward onto the mattress at his gentle shove and the predatory glint in his eyes sends another shock up her spine. 

“You’re so fucking hot,” he breathes out after she divests herself of the twisted tank and bra cups and wriggles out of her jeans, leaving her in only her (carefully selected) animal print lace thong. 

It’s a compliment Veronica has received before—a fun one, if a bit impersonal—but coming from Archie, the words soften and melt over her. 

“And you’re _hiding_ your hotness,” Veronica complains. “Get naked, Archie.” More than willing to comply, he throws off his clothes in the space of one blink until he covers her with his warm body and there is only the cotton of his boxers separating the heat of him from her thigh, where he ruts with a long moan. 

Both overcome with sensation, they lay there bucking against each other without kisses or touch like a couple of adolescents exploring for the first time. It feels _good_ but there are certain perks that come with growing into one’s sexuality and several of them involve Archie removing her underwear. 

She scrapes her nails through his hair to catch his attention and he surges up to kiss her. His lips ground her, kissing her lazily, which gives her the opportunity to sneak her hands under his waistband and squeeze hard against his ass. It pushes him firmly into the space between her legs and she lifts her hips to gain friction 

“Fuck,” he hisses, dropping his head to her neck and panting heavily. He presses into her again when she moves one hand around front to cup him. “Ronnie this is going to be over embarrassingly fast if you keep doing that.” 

That in and of itself is a compliment, but Veronica understands wanting to make this last and takes pity—but not before first wrapping her whole hand around him and pumping a few times. Archie catches her hand to stop. “You first,” he insists. 

She certainly isn’t going to complain.

Something about the way he pushes her underwear to the side to feel her instead of removing them altogether makes her eyes roll back into her head. It’s for that reason that she doesn’t realize where his mouth has gone until his tongue is on her clit and his fingers push up into her. 

Veronica has to bite down on her lip hard to not yelp at the feeling. _Christ_ he’s good at that, she thinks, her last coherent thought until she comes against his mouth and she can feel him smile into the crease of her thigh. He kisses his way back up to her, placing his lips on her hipbone, over her navel, below each breast, sucks on each nipple, and then runs up her breastbone and neck with an open mouth. 

She tastes herself on his lips when he kisses her fully and it has her squirming again. 

“Archie,” she whines—though what for, she can’t be sure. 

He palms one breast in response. “Yeah?” he breathes. “What do you need?” 

Veronica thinks she might mumble _You, I need you,_ but his mouth and hands are all over her again and it’s hard to think straight. 

“Veronica,” Archie kneels upright, bracketing her hips, and retrieves a condom. “You’re sure? You’re ready?” 

“God, yes,” she moans and kicks off the thong while he rolls the condom on. His hands cup her ass to lift her slightly and help them both into a position that makes it easy for him to enter her in one smooth motion. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” 

Veronica can’t tell which of them is groaning the word, or if it’s both of them, only that Archie’s hold is as tender as it is firm as he moves hard inside her. He seems equally overwhelmed and leans down to bite on a nipple, so Veronica slips her own fingers down to where they’re joined and rubs slippery circles. With a particularly sharp thrust and a harder bite, Veronica feels herself tip over the edge and arches into his mouth. 

Archie mumbles into her chest, “You’re fucking gorgeous when you come,” and moves faster and faster until he brings his fist up to his mouth to muffle his shout. They lay there, breathing hard, for several quiet moments until Archie rolls over to toss the condom. He only leaves for a second, then climbs in next to her and gathers her up in his arms 

Content and sated and _happy_ , Veronica cuddles into his side.

When their sweat has dried tacky on their skin, Veronica knows she needs to clean up but is just so comfortable in Archie’s grasp. “That was wonderful,” he whispers into the crown of her head. His breath tickles her scalp and she giggles. 

She rolls over until she can prop her chin on her hands on his chest. “More than,” she agrees with a kiss to his pec. “I should use the washroom, though.” 

Archie fakes a pout. “Nooo, stay here.” 

“I’ll be right back,” she promises. Veronica pulls on her jeans and Archie’s discarded shirt and makes for the door. 

“Hang on, let me make sure Jug’s in his room first.” 

She tilts her head. “His room?” Veronica knows that Jughead spends a shit ton of time here, given that he and Archie are best friends, but she hadn’t realized—

“Ah, shit.” Archie scrubs a hand down his face. “Don’t let him know you know, but Jug is living with us. His dad… he’s never been great, obviously, since we know about the Serpents. But he’s not a good guy, at all.” Veronica blinks, remembering the black eye Jughead had sported last week. Her throat sours with bile. 

“God,” she whispers. 

Archie swallows hard and nods. “He is having a really shit time right now, which is definitely why he was so mad at Betty this week. And you. Jughead is a good guy, though. He just needs to be cut some slack in order to show it. He’s fiercely loyal, Ronnie, I promise.” Veronica bites her lip, nods. She gets it, and she’ll give him that slack if Archie is asking. Archie looks relieved. “He’ll be up forever, I only wanted to see if he was out and about.” He pokes his head out the bedroom door and seems satisfied. Smiling slightly, he holds out an arm to guide her way. When she’s just past, he tugs on her wrist and pulls her in for a kiss. 

In the bathroom, Veronica splashes some cold water on her face and flicks away some smudged makeup with her thumb. Archie’s worn shirt is as soft as she had anticipated and she almost doesn’t want to give it back. Not that she can show up in a boy’s shirt at home, knowing that her parents are almost definitely waiting for her to come back. 

Sure enough, in her back pocket, her phone buzzes with a text from her mother. **_Not an exact curfew mija but I wouldn’t push it too much later, your father is working late and will hear you come in._ **

Back in his bedroom, Archie grins at Veronica’s reluctance to give his shirt back. “How’s this,” he barters. “You can have my football hoodie instead.” He pulls a soft blue hooded sweatshirt from the back of his chair and waves it, attempting a poor Vanna White impression. Veronica grabs for it eagerly and pulls it on over her tank; her jacket may look a bit bulky when she walks into the Pembrooke but the comforting scent of Archie’s aftershave and laundry detergent will be worth the continued subterfuge. 

When they head for the stairs, Veronica glances back at the closed door next to Archie’s. A light shows underneath, shadows moving like Jughead might be pacing. Her heart pangs, ever so slightly. 

Archie isn’t quiet on the stairs down, so she doesn’t try to rein in the clicking of her boots’ heels. When she bumps into his back on the landing, Veronica regrets that choice. The spitting image of Archie, aged up and without the red hair, stands at the foot of the stairs, jaw set and eyes narrowed. 

“Uh, Dad, hey,” Archie says nervously. “This is Veronica Lodge, my girlfriend.” 

Despite the deep awkwardness, Veronica’s heart swells at being called his girlfriend again.

“Hi, Veronica, it’s very nice to meet you,” Mr. Andrews says. “I would have preferred to meet you on the first floor.” She goes pink and looks down at her shoes, chagrined. “You’re Hiram and Hermione’s daughter, I presume?” Veronica nods, perking up; she is dying to know more about her parents’ time in Riverdale. Mr. Andrews’s eyes soften, “Tell your mom I said hello.” 

Archie makes a pained noise. His dad rounds on him, “I take it you’re being a gentleman and driving Veronica home but you stay here for one second. Give Veronica your keys so she can warm up the car.” Veronica scurries away but not before hearing Mr. Andrews say something about _not being an idiot_ and _using protection_ and then she walks even faster. 

When Archie finally joins her in the front seat, his face is flaming red. “I thought having _the talk_ in 6th grade was bad enough but apparently there is much more to be said when you’re caught home alone with your girlfriend at 17.” 

Veronica giggles and holds his hand, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Your dad seems nice.” Archie grumbles and shifts into drive. They hold hands the whole drive back and share a lingering kiss while he idles at the front door of the building. 

“Goodnight, Ronnie,” Archie breathes into her mouth, forehead resting against hers. 

Veronica feels giddy the whole elevator ride up and when she turns the lock on the door, the apartment is blissfully silent. Her mother has fallen asleep on the couch, but Daddy’s office door is dark. 

“Mami,” she whispers and shakes her mother’s shoulder gently. “I’m home, Mami, go to bed.” 

Her mother blinks awake and gives her a warm smile. “Hi, sweetheart. How was your night?” Veronica tries to hold in her blush and her excitement. Her mom rolls her eyes lightly, then catches sight of the Riverdale High Football sweatshirt through her open coat. “Guess you had a very _nice_ night, then, mija.”

Veronica chews on her bottom lip. “He’s my boyfriend,” she admits.

“You look happy,” her mother tells her, reaching up to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. Veronica leans into the touch. “Get some sleep.” 

As she’s getting ready for bed, Veronica’s phone dings. She snorts in surprise to see that Jughead has, for once, used the group thread with the four of them. 

**_Nothing huge to report, but enough interesting details to merit talking in person. Let’s debrief at Pops at 9._ **

Veronica desperately wants to text back with a _debriefing_ innuendo, but pockets the joke for later. Instead she slips Archie’s sweatshirt back over her head and falls asleep with a smile on her face. 

In the morning, Veronica rolls out of bed with the express intention of not running into either of her parents on her way out the door this time. The mission is a success but she has no particular inclination to spend extra time with Jughead—she knows he’s probably been awake for ages, or never even went to sleep—at Pop’s by showing up earlier than planned. 

(Archie, she knows, will be at least 10 minutes late. He’s cute but he is not punctual.) 

Instead, she calls Betty, figuring she can save her from the walk into town. She is absolutely up, the girl may as well be the energizer bunny—and nobody is safe from their body clock after years of a high school alarm—but the phone rings and rings. Veronica frowns. 

That is not a good sign. 

She idles on the corner of Elm St. for a while after the second call goes to voicemail, weighing her options. Mrs. Cooper has never explicitly implied that she doesn’t like Veronica but she gets the impression she is not her best friend’s mother’s favorite person in the world—she’s been considered a bad influence long before getting Betty to sneak out of the house. If she were to show up unannounced with Mrs. Cooper home (and she must be, if Betty isn’t answering), Veronica might succeed only in getting Betty into more trouble. 

The girl deserves a break and a plateful of goddamn home fries. 

Veronica makes do with a slow drive up the block and spies the Cooper station wagon parked next to Mr. Cooper’s midlife crisis mini coupe. _Both parents, yikes,_ Veronica thinks, sucking an inhale through her teeth. The Coopers are still ‘together,’ as Betty always jokes with air quotes, but ever since Polly dropped out after the Sweetwater incident, the existing fissures in the Cooper illusion are widening cracks. 

Through it all, Betty acts the perfect, unflappable daughter. 

Veronica knows better. 

She’ll order Betty a huge coffee to arrive to. Maybe some waffles. 

As it happens, Veronica is the first of them to arrive so she commandeers a large corner booth and waves a cheery hello to Pop himself. 

“Good morning, Miss Lodge, how are you and your folks?” 

Veronica falters slightly, part of her mind flying back to the cold impersonality of her parents’ new home. 

“We’re well, Pop thank you.” She fidgets under Pop’s kind smile. “I’ve got a few friends on the way, but could I get some coffee while I wait?” 

“Absolutely,” he nods. “How many mugs?” 

“Four.” 

Pop grins. “Does that include Jughead and Betty? I’ll brew a fresh pot, those two will go through a whole one themselves.” 

Jughead and Archie arrive together, much to her surprise given Archie is mid-yawn as he says hello, and she has to suppress the heat flashing through her at the memories of last night. She wants Archie so much that it takes over her whole being. His warm body against hers in the booth has her heart fluttering and when he slings his arm around her shoulder, Veronica thinks she could die of happiness. 

Across the table from them, Veronica is tempted to tease Jughead by insinuating the things that have happened in the front seat of the truck he just exited but thinks better of it. He looks just as worn down as the day before, if not more so, and she finds herself wanting only to cheer him up. Realistically, though, she knows that won’t happen until Betty shows up.

Which takes a _while._ Jughead is onto his second cup of coffee and Archie, complaining about his grumbling stomach, orders toast to tide him over and they _both_ demolish the stack by the time Betty is visible at the far end of the parking lot. She is practically jogging her way up to the door and makes an exasperated face at Veronica when she catches her eye through the window. 

Betty collapses into the space next to Jughead on the booth and slumps down. Her eyes are rimmed with red and faint mascara streaks line her cheeks. For her sake, Veronica hopes Betty didn’t end up crying until she left her house—Betty loathes showing weakness and never likes people seeing her cry, especially her parents. 

“Alice,” she mumbles, offering no more explanation than that. 

Veronica is just reaching her hand across the table to grasp Betty’s when Jughead beats her to it and rubs a reassuring hand on her shoulder. This time even Archie raises his eyebrows. 

Betty leans into his touch and Veronica swoons. _Way to go, Holden Caulfield,_ she cheers. 

After they all order—Jughead and Archie requesting an obscene amount of food—Veronica steeples her hands to rest her chin on. “Okay, Jones, what have you got?” 

Jughead has his mouth full and, to his credit, holds up his finger in a _one minute_ gesture while he chews. 

“So,” he starts. “No one was acting any weirder than usual—” Archie coughs a laugh that earns him a glare “—but Dilton and Ben especially were into the concept of going _off board_ for game quests.” 

“What does that mean,” Archie asks. 

Jughead makes a face. “Remember that I firmly draw the line at LARPing with kids I’ve known since kindergarten—” this time Betty is the one to giggle and Jughead only gives her a wry smile “—but it’s basically, like—well—ah fuck, it’s dressing up as your characters and acting out the campaign. Ostensibly out in public.” 

Very sincerely, Archie leans forward. “Jughead, I need to know everything about your character and what your costume would look like.” 

Jughead flips him the bird, sending Betty and Veronica into giggles. 

“ _Anyway,”_ he continues, “The rest of the group wasn’t opposed to it, but those two were really into it. Talked about rewriting quests to incorporate physical elements around town and brainstormed about what the Sweetwater Secrets quests we didn’t see were.” Jughead makes a face. “The ideas were, uh, kind of gross.” 

Veronica wrinkles her nose. “Spare me, please.” 

“Happy to,” he mutters. 

Betty pipes up, resting her chin in her hand to turn and look at Jughead. “So what are you thinking, then, for how this ties back to Sweetwater, if none of these guys seem to know anything?” 

Jughead pauses, and Veronica sees him trying to find the right words. “It was the group-think of it all that stuck with me. The moment those two were so lit up about going off board, the energy shifted. Everybody _else_ thought it was a good idea, even if they originally scoffed. It was easy for them to be swept up in it. And this Sweetwater evolution is a massive undertaking. So I’m thinking it might be even more than a single mastermind with programming skills, or at least a programming buddy. What if,” he says, swallowing hard, “What if this is a whole team of people?” 

The four of them shift uncomfortably in their seats, tense while they digest this. 

All of the sudden, Veronica feels too nauseous to finish the French toast Pop sets down in front of her. 

The rest of the weekend passes in a blur of homework and cute texts from Archie and stressed texts from Betty and obsessively checking for pop-ups from Sweetwater. 

There’s only one: Bret Weston Wallis, of all people, selected. The group texts about it, but their general consensus is, well, _serves him right._ Nobody is surprised when his quest confirmation comes through a few hours later. 

Saturday night ‘family’ dinner is stilted and awkward and Veronica calls Betty afterward to commiserate about parents acting insane, but she doesn’t pick up so Veronica resigns herself to watching trashy tv. (Betty texts late, explaining she was on the phone with Polly, so Veronica can’t even be grouchy with her.) 

Sunday is yoga and triple checking the practice schedule for game week and shopping for Archie’s rally gifts and the AP Lit essay she’s been ignoring and then all of the sudden it’s Monday and she is in Archie’s lap in the truck again. 

Jughead had driven in with him—he’s been driving that motorcycle she _knows_ Betty is practically panting over but it’s raining—and mimes vomiting when Veronica taps on the window before Archie even kills the engine. 

“You won’t be so judgmental when you get your head out of your ass and it’s Betty in your lap on your bike,” Veronica teases sharply. She gets a middle finger but his ears are red beneath that damn beanie as he walks off. 

“Be nice,” Archie pleads. 

“I am being nice,” Veronica says, situating herself primly over his groin and sucking a kiss under his chin. “It will be _nice_ when those two get over themselves, so I am merely helping them along.” 

Archie rolls his eyes and captures her mouth in a hungry kiss. Her lipstick is definitely smudged by the time they break apart and she makes a face at him while reapplying using the rearview mirror. “Your first game week gift,” she croons afterward, pulling out an ear-warmer headband. “For when it gets cold and you’re still doing outside runs. Part two, I’ll show you once we get inside.” 

They dash through the rain holding hands and Veronica mildly regrets wearing a miniskirt, but it was for maximum effect when she peels off her damp trench coat to grin at Archie. With her black velvet mini and heeled Chelsea boots, Veronica wears his practice jersey, French-tucked in the front, which she nicked from the laundry room when she was at his house.

His Adam’s apple bobs and jaw drops, the precise effect she had been hoping for. It’s a little nerve wracking to wear his name and number on her back, but in a butterflies sort of way. He kisses her so fiercely that they miss the warning bell altogether. 

Veronica is giddy as she grabs her notebooks for first period, despite the rush. Her lateness is how she witnesses the dramatic entrance that stops the rest of the morning late-comers in their tracks: Donna, back from her suspension, pushing Bret down the hall in a wheelchair to accommodate an enormous leg cast.

The image is bizarre and sticks with her until lunch when Archie slides in next to her in the student lounge. “Bret isn’t answering anybody on what his quest was. Fucking wild. This is _dangerous._ And,” he mourns, “Not for nothing, but we’re totally boned for our game on Friday with him and Reggie out.” 

Veronica rests her head on his shoulder, humming in sympathy. “Should we go see Betty and Jughead at the newspaper office? Maybe they’ve heard something or figured some of it out.” 

Archie nods and stands again, offering to carry Veronica’s food in addition to his own sandwich. It leaves Veronica’s hand free to frantically dig in her bag when the echo of a dozen phones buzzing cuts through the lounge. 

Sweetwater Secrets notification. Everyone scrambles and then stares in their direction. Archie looks perplexed until Veronica, feeling the color drain from her face, flips her phone for Archie to see: 

**With a snake for a friend and a thief for a girlfriend, let’s see what Mr. Big Man on Campus is hiding. Truth or Quest, Archie Andrews?**

* * *

Betty has become attuned to Jughead’s movements; or rather, she has become attuned to how his movements orbit _her._ She used to think that their phone calls were going to be the truest version of Jughead she would see, a veil of safety meaning that he was only comfortable around her when he could avoid meeting her eyes. Now she sees, though, that the phone calls were merely a stepping stone on the way to experiencing all the kindness Jughead could give, once his trust is earned. 

Where once he used to shutter the light he exuded when alone with Archie and slip into his disaffected exterior, Betty has seen the evolution of him being slower to do so around her—then even slower and less opaque, until now, when she is almost certain Jughead isn’t trying to shut her out at all. 

It’s the good-natured eye roll he sent her way when Veronica and Archie were overly flirty at Pop’s on Saturday, the sheepish wave he’ll give if they happen to see each other from their respective houses (Jughead in the kitchen usually, Betty sighing heavily under Alice’s homework-watching eye in the living room), his eyes on the back of her head in Spanish class this morning and the way he hangs back and slows his packing up so he can catch her precisely on the way out. 

“Care to theorize during break?” he asks, voice low. 

It shouldn’t sound like a proposition but, _good god,_ does she wish it were one. _Theorizing_ coming from Jughead sounds as seductive as if he had asked, _Come into a dark corner with me?_

Which, Betty realizes as she flicks on the lights to the Blue & Gold office, he kind of _had._ But instead of pressing her up against the doorframe like the Jughead in her dreams did last night, this Jughead drops his bag to the ground and hops up on a desk, looking pensive. As though the tactile press of the door might will the dream into existence, Betty leans where she is; dreamland-Jughead would have whispered into her ear and drawn her closer with wide palms on around her waist, pushed her ponytail aside and pulled back the neck of her sweater to suck a bruise into the tender skin; would have looked at her with those soft eyes, the ones he averts to the ground when he’s parked the bike and she clambers off, and told her she’s beautiful and tucked the tips of his fingers under her waistband and then asked if she wants to try something. 

“Betty?” 

She snaps to attention, seeing those soft eyes from the real life Jughead several yards in front of her instead of his eyelashes whispering against her cheekbone. 

“Yes, yeah, sorry! What were you saying?” Today, she is grateful for the annoyingly high collar of an Alice-purchased sweater because she recognizes the prickling heat of her anxiety hives making their way across her breastbone. They’re unsightly and part of why those high collars have always been helpful; she pushed herself to speak in class, prove herself, but all those eyes used to make her skin crawl and sent her nails into her palms. 

So did what Coopers are expected to do: figure it out. She trimmed her nails short and stopped fighting her mother on her wardrobe choices, then kept talking in class until her confidence grew and grew and eventually her voice stopped shaking. The hives could be hit or miss, depending on the day, the temperature, anything; the nails, well, the nails Betty could live with. 

The dark polish Veronica had carefully brushed on them—a week ago already, which seems like mere minutes before or months ago—served dual purpose in that Betty spotted Jughead eyeing them and their shiny allure convinced Betty to keep them out of her palms and her teeth. 

Betty drums said nails against her thigh, bringing herself sharply back to the present moment. Jughead had begun talking again, his back to her while examining their notes, and hadn’t noticed her attention wandering. 

“I have to say,” Jughead sighs, “Up until now, I thought Bret made sense as our guy… or one of our guys, anyway. But forcing himself into a dare wouldn’t make sense.” 

“Maybe it does,” Betty counters. “Say that Bret _is_ part of it. Like you mentioned, he makes sense. What better way to throw off suspicion than to pass off as your own target, right? And by choosing _quest,_ Bret doesn’t have any consequences. No truth to come out, and most of us have no idea what anybody else’s dares were.” 

Jughead nods his assent. “I guess that means anybody who chooses quest that doesn’t have spectators could be behind the scenes. Which puts us …basically at square one.” He groans and then rests his forehead flat on the board in front of him. “Christ, we haven’t done _anything_ productive with all of this except piss off Sweetwater and make things worse for our friends.” 

Betty gulps. Jughead—well, Jughead isn’t _wrong._ It has been eating at her with every moment she spends worrying that she’s not spending enough time on this—is all the time and energy worth it? But if not them, then who? 

She and Jughead are at the heart of it. They’re _in it_ and Sweetwater dragged them into it. And they did the same to Midge and Moose and Ginger and Veronica and Reggie and everybody targeted in the years before—maybe the pair of them aren’t making progress right now, but they’re _trying._ And they will. 

They have to. 

_We have to get them._

It isn’t until Jughead walks over, apology clear on his face, that Betty realizes she spoke out loud. He reaches for her tensed fist and she flinches at the contact, but he doesn’t back away. “We do, and we will,” he promises. “We won’t let them get away with this.” 

They end up walking to class together and Betty picks up on all the subtle aggressions in the hall that she had missed from not walking with him recently; hisses and jeers in his direction, and most notably, all of his locker’s contents dumped on the floor when they pass by. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. 

His binders and notebooks all seem to have muddy boot prints on them. SERPENT SCUM is sharpied onto the inner side of the door. 

“Jug.” Betty crouches down to help him gather loose papers and tries to get him to meet her eye. “Has it been like this the whole time?” 

Eyes trained on the twisted wire spine of a notebook labelled ‘physics’ in his scratchy hand, Jughead skirts around her question. “This is just because they had access. Weatherbee cut my fucking lock yesterday.” 

Betty is indignant but knows showing her surprise would only upset him further and rightfully so. Of course the administration is going degrade and belittle someone whose family isn’t up to Riverdale par—it’s the same way that the lower-income Riverdale zip code is barred from the town activities simply because of the stupidly high cost of little league baseball, or how her own mother chooses only write full articles about crime from that side of town. It’s such bullshit. 

“You can store your stuff in my locker for now,” Betty offers. 

She expects him to fight her on it. He doesn’t. 

Instead, his voice sounds scratchy when he murmurs his thanks and even smiles slightly when she nods in the direction of her locker. 

“No glitter?” he teases when she spins her combination and opens the door. Betty cuts him a glance and decides not to mention the time Veronica gave her a pink mini disco ball for her locker sophomore year. Senior year’s locker is simple: a magnetic pencil cup with extra pens and highlighters and a hairbrush, a small mirror, and a polaroid of her and Veronica at the Sweetwater River swimming hole over the summer. 

He taps a finger against her photo. “I remember that day actually, Archie dragged me with him. I have no idea why I let him talk me into it.” 

Betty smiles. “I’m glad he did, that was a fun day. Even if Archie burst open my bottle of sunscreen and I got crazy tan lines from the bathing suit Ronnie loaned me, even though I looked ridiculous in it.” She _had,_ it was one of those one pieces that had so many cut-outs it showed more skin than a normal bikini would have and Veronica foisted it on her in the name of fashion. 

“Nah,” Jughead says casually. “You looked good in it.” For the first time since this confusion of maybe-sort-of-flirting had started, Jughead has doubled down on his flirtatious comment instead of backpedaling. Betty’s eyes widen in surprise. He shrugs. “You did. And your freckles got crazy after that day. It was cute.” 

Flustered, Betty turns into her locker to clear out the top shelf. It takes a few tries to get her voice to a normal register to say, “Here, this is all yours.” Jughead stacks his notebooks as neatly as their current state would allow and steps back to let her close and lock the door. 

As they continue down the hall, Jughead’s bag bumps against her leg a couple of times; when he steadies it with a hand on the strap, his fingers brush over her thigh and Betty chews her bottom lip to not embarrass herself—by doing _what_ exactly, she isn’t sure. 

AP Lit is a conversation-heavy class and the two-person tables in the room are set up in a horseshoe shape to facilitate discussion. Betty usually sits at the end table furthest from the door, splitting the table with Veronica, but that table is occupied already. Donna sits, smug, in Veronica’s preferred seat, next to Bret—who is perpendicular to the table because of the large wheelchair that props up his cast-encased leg. 

Betty is so startled that she stops dead in the doorway, causing Jughead to walk right into her and them both to stumble. She might be more affected by his warm, solid body against her back if not for the bizarre scene. Jughead makes a noise, a cross somewhere between confusion and apology, and places his hand on her upper arm to steady them both. 

“What the fuck,” Betty mutters over her shoulder, as she and Jughead take the long way around to her spot. 

Jughead exhales heavily. “Maybe his quest wasn’t a ruse after all.” 

Somewhat reluctant, Betty takes the seat next to Donna, and Jughead slides in next to her. She thinks Veronica will forgive the change—if only so she can stare down Donna from further away. 

“Cooper. Jones.” Donna’s voice is saccharine and placid. “Good to see you both. I look forward to the newspaper meeting today. I didn’t see your usual assignments email, Betty, but I assume that was a mistake and not a slight about my suspension.” 

Betty gulps. It _had_ been a mistake—she forgot to send assignments out altogether. 

Jughead talks over Donna’s follow up snark, for which Betty is grateful. “Bret, did you lose a fight, or something? Or just tripped over air?” 

Bret sneers. “I see you’re not above mocking an invalid, Forsythe.” Betty has to stifle a giggle at his use of Jughead’s given name but he definitely catches on and kicks her ankle lightly. 

As the second bell rights, Veronica breezes through the door, heels clicking on the floor. Confusion flits across her face at the seating arrangement before narrowing her gaze to a lethal glare at Donna. She takes the seat directly across from her and breaks the stare only to glance at Betty, pointedly nod at her seatmate, and wink. 

Betty plucks at her shirt collar and mouths, _Nice jersey,_ back at her. Archie’s jersey practically dwarfs her but somehow Veronica pulls it off; her best friend could make a paper bag look fashionable. 

As Mr. Jenkins calls them to attention, Donna fusses over Bret, helping him wheel in the exact angle he _needed_ to see the board while Jenkins teaches. Mr. Jenkins looks annoyed by the kerfuffle. “Ms. Sweett, I might concern yourself more with your own note-taking and attention, given you have missed a week of class and assignments.” 

Murmurs of shock and _ooh_ ’s ripple through the room; Veronica crosses her legs primly and uncaps her pen with a look of _Welcome back, bitch,_ clear on her face; Jughead coughs his laughter into his hand. Betty feels the anger coming off Donna in waves. Donna, like the majority of their classmates in this room, is an easy contender for top GPA and acceptances to prestigious colleges, but a weeklong suspension for homophobic comments will be near impossible to explain away during admissions interviews. 

Donna has always been on the maniacal side about being top of the class and getting any kind of commendation the school could offer—even going so far as to convince the administration to print and deliver Honor Roll certificates instead of merely sharing the list of names. In particular, Betty knows that Donna was furious with Adam for choosing Betty as editor-in-chief; they weren’t _dating-_ dating, but Betty gets the impression Donna upheld a friends-with-benefits arrangement with Adam solely to earn the position. 

Similar to Jughead’s point about Bret, Betty wants to keep a shrewd eye on Donna. Her brand of ambition fits with the app’s goal of tearing down others. But there’s no way, not with the way she and Bret are attached at the hip, not if Bret is physically hurt from a quest. She has to wonder what his truth is—probably that he’s bribing admissions offices. 

Betty would delight in Donna and Bret getting their comeuppance, no matter the ethics of it all, but she knows that they are merely two of many students in RHS whose parents will buy their way into a prestigious college. 

The thought turns her stomach, especially with Jughead on her right side. Jughead, who deserves everything his work ethic and intelligence can get him, but is now being treated like dirt—like he is _less than_ —for something his father has done, for where his family could afford to live. 

She swallows the impulse to place a reassuring hand on his knee and opens her book to the page Jenkins calls out. 

During lunch, Jughead once again lays across multiple desks in the Blue & Gold office. He is funneling chip crumbs into his mouth straight from the bag and Betty knows she should probably be repulsed by the action, but she is too distracted—once again—by the thin strip of skin visible as his tshirt rides up with the action. 

She has had her apple halfway to her mouth for a solid minute until finally remembering she meant to take a bite out of it. 

Crunching on it, she tries to shake herself out of this crush fog. Juice from the apple sprays over her hand and runs down her lips, and Betty makes a disgruntled noise to herself. She sets the apple down and licks at the juice spilling over her lips before sucking the rest of it off her thumb. 

Where there had been crinkling of chip packaging, there is now silence, and Betty glances up to see Jughead, upright, looking at her much like she imagines she had been looking at him seconds before she bit into the apple. Jaw slack, eyes dazed, fingers fidgeting to keep from reaching out to touch warm skin. 

They’re staring at each other and Betty begins to think maybe this is the moment, maybe a goddamn granny smith apple is what will make them both cross this invisible, impossible hurdle between them. 

But, because it’s Betty—because it’s _them,_ this isn’t the moment, even though she so desperately wants it to be. 

Her phone buzzes violently and they both jump. 

“Fuck,” Betty says under her breath. And then—“ _Fuck,_ ” out loud. 

Jughead’s demeanor changes as he leaps off the desk and walks over to her. “What? What’s wrong? Sweetwater?” 

All of Betty’s anxieties from the morning, that they’ve done nothing but waste time and they haven’t helped anybody, bubble up and spill over. She doesn’t even try to choke back her sob when she hangs her head and slides the phone over to Jughead. 

It’s his turn to swear, but Jughead doesn’t stop with one _fuck_ and it leads into a string of curses—each more inventive than the previous—that doesn’t stop until the office door opens and Archie and Veronica enter. 

Veronica has tears of frustration in her eyes that match Betty’s own but Archie is unusually calm. Jughead takes one look at him and continues his tirade without taking a breath. Jughead peters out eventually and then they all sit in silence through the rest of the lunch period. 

Betty doesn’t have enough time to get things together for the full paper staff meeting after school and she can feel her tenuous grasp on control slipping away. Donna glides into the office demanding her assignment, followed by the rest of the staff asking, albeit less aggressively, what was going on. 

She is scrambling and everybody can tell and their eyes are on her, expectant, and suddenly Betty feels like she’s drowning. On one hand, she drags the nail of her pointer finger down her thumb’s nailbed, hard enough to rip into the skin. The prick of pain ripples through her spine and she straightens. Behind her back, she rests the other hand in a tight fist against her lower back and forces herself to carry on. 

A small, sick voice in the back of her head tells Betty, after she’s managed to run the meeting without issue: _Mom would be proud._ She doesn’t get a chance to squash it because Donna whips her hand into the air. 

“Betty, you must be slipping up again, because I know you didn’t forget to announce that the Annual Tri-State Student Journalism Contest submissions are open.” Her sanctimonious smile grates on Betty’s nerves. She picks at her raw nails. 

“No, Donna, I did not forget. The submissions actually open at the _end_ of this week, so I planned to wait and email the staff later this week. But since you’re insisting.” Betty sips in more air and blows it out evenly. “As Donna just announced for us all, the annual student journalism contest is coming up. All juniors and seniors are eligible to submit pieces, whether or not they have been published in our paper. If you have questions, all the details are on their website which I will email to everybody as soon as we’re finished here.” 

Donna’s voice, _again,_ cracks the silence. “Not a question, per se, but I think it’s only fair that any previous contest winners, especially from our own paper, should be barred from submitting again.” 

Betty could scream. She placed second in the previous year’s competition, and Jughead listed as a runner-up, a fact that Donna apparently has not let go of. 

Even the rest of the group has lost their patience with Donna at least. Trev Brown, bless him, speaks up. “Donna, knock if off, nobody cares.” Surprised snickers fill the room and Betty uses the opportunity to dismiss the meeting. 

Donna flounces out in a snit and the rest of the group shuffles through the door. Jughead, unsurprisingly, hangs back—but so does Trev. From his desk a few feet away, Betty sees Jughead glowering in her direction and flinches, until realizing the glare is directed toward Trev and not her. 

“You doing okay, Betty?” he asks, with concern and a light smile on his face. “I know Donna’s being her usual self but you seemed kinda out of it before that.” 

Jughead scoffs in her periphery and Trev startles, looking in his direction. “Oh, hey, Jughead. How are you doing?” Trev’s voice is sincere, probably the first kind interaction Jughead has had beyond their small group of four if the morning is anything to go by. 

“Fine,” he mumbles before busying himself with his laptop. 

Betty turns back to him. “I’m alright, Trev, just a lot going on. Thank you for asking, though, that’s really sweet.” Jughead makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat, but Betty still catches it. 

Trev seems to as well. He raises his eyebrows, saying, “Okay, well I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.” 

She is just about to whip around and demand to know what his problem is but there’s a knock from the doorway and somebody calling her name. 

“Hey, Cooper,” Munroe Moore says from across the room. 

Betty vaguely hears an _oh for fuck’s sake_ from Jughead’s direction. 

“Hi, Munroe, what’s up?” 

He grins and Betty, much as she has been preoccupied with inappropriate thoughts of the other boy in the room, is not immune to Munroe’s charm and good looks. For everyone’s sake, she really hopes she isn’t blushing right now. 

“Wondering if you’ve seen Andrews anywhere? I know you two are tight and he disappeared right after practice. I’m just a bit worried about him because...” he trails off. “Well, you know why. Figured I’d see if you knew where he was.” 

Betty winces. She hadn’t even thought to track down Archie after the final bell, too caught up in her own stressors and commitments—not even recognizing that one of her biggest stressors, the Sweetwater investigation, directly impacts him now. 

“I haven’t, I’m sorry.” She glances over her shoulder to Jughead. “Jug, did you see him?” 

Munroe seems to notice Jughead’s presence now. “Oh, hey, Jones. You good?” Again, Jughead looks taken aback by the acknowledgement and inquiry. 

“No, and yeah, respectively. Archie’s my ride home, though, so I better find him.” 

Munroe nods and gives a two-fingered salute before exiting, and when Betty turns to Jughead, he is already packed up and breezing past her. 

“Jug, where—”

“Gotta find Arch for my ride,” he mumbles. 

He’s avoiding her—again. Betty scrambles to get her things together and ends up cramming everything in her backpack to save time, not even cringing when she hears the crunching of paper. Jughead is all the way down the hall when she locks the office door and seeks him out; shouting down the hallway seems like a terrible idea so she all but breaks out into a sprint to catch up to him. 

“Jug,” she calls when she is close enough that he’ll hear her at her normal volume. “Wait up!” 

She knows she is huffing and puffing and her face is probably red from the exertion. (She is woefully out of shape, Polly having been her main exercise buddy before ...everything.) 

Yet again, Jughead seems shocked by someone demonstrating care. It stings that Betty counts among those he doesn’t expect that from, but she shoves that to the back of her mind. He’s deflecting, she knows this. 

“It’s pouring rain, Juggie, and Arch is probably long gone if he left after practice. My mom has the car so I’m walking, too. Let’s at least share my umbrella?” 

He nods sullenly, but says nothing. In the overhang just outside the exit, Betty fumbles with her umbrella. It’s golf-size and obnoxious and she worries it looks childish with its clear covering and polka dots but given that Jughead isn’t looking her in the eye, let alone looking up at the umbrella, she lets it go. 

There is a heavy silence between them, punctuated only by the rain pelting down and the occasional puddle splash. 

Betty thought they were back on good terms after last week’s fight, but maybe Jughead hasn’t forgiven her after all. Maybe he’s just playing nice for Archie’s sake. 

They’d had it out the day after she and Veronica broke into school. “I don’t like having to tiptoe like something I say or do might set you off,” Betty defended. “I like you, Jughead, but right now being there for Veronica comes first, even before our investigation and I’m sorry if that upsets you.” She had seen his eyes widen a bit at her _I like you_ and she barreled on, not wanting to address it because maybe then it would seem like a friendly _I like you_ and not an _I have sex dreams about you_ kind of _I like you_ and clearly his look of surprise right now and their fight last night outweighs that maybe-kiss from last week. “You’re being unfair,” she finished, quietly. 

“So are _you,_ ” he had shot back. “Veronica comes first for you, but Archie comes first for me. I wasn’t about to put blind faith in somebody Archie’s been infatuated with for a grand total of two weeks. He’s all I have, Betty, and maybe you don’t understand that, but when you only have one person in your life you look out for them at all costs.”

Betty whispered, “You have me, too, Juggie,” and it was then that she had seen a flash of red and brunette, Archie and Veronica spying on them, and Betty sent Archie a withering look through the door’s tiny window. Jughead followed her gaze to see them disappear. 

“Love an audience,” Jughead muttered. She tried to pick up the conversation, to give him the apology he deserved but then they had... just not talked about it. 

They’d _talked_ , yes, even had their movie phone calls, but not the two nights of their fight. Betty let him to cool off on Wednesday, hoping he might extend an olive branch and call _her,_ but no such luck. Thursday had been such a nightmare with Weatherbee’s threat that Betty found herself desperate to hear Jughead’s soft, even voice over the phone and had been crushed when he didn’t pick up. He had eventually returned the call, very late and sounding distracted, but they started Blazing Saddles so late that he’d fallen asleep twenty minutes in. With tears in her eyes, Betty had hung up.

But they’ve been okay over the weekend. Or, she thought they had been. 

Upset, Betty kicks viciously at a puddle in the middle of a crosswalk. 

They’re bumping together under the coverage of the umbrella which feels infinitely smaller now that Jughead’s lanky form is under it. She isn’t exactly complaining, no matter how confused or vexed she may be by him right now. When they make it Elm, Betty’s heart skips happily to see her empty driveway. Maybe they could spend more time together, maybe she should ask, maybe he’ll ask, maybe—

“Bye,” Jughead mumbles, ducking out from under her umbrella and rushing up the Andrewses’ steps. 

Maybe not, then. 

Two fruitless hours of homework attempts later, Betty gives up and slams her textbook closed. She’s frustrated with Jughead but also can’t stop her brain from running away with theories and he’s the only one to brainstorm with, really, so— 

**_Have we considered looking at our collective ‘enemies’? You were the first target, then Veronica, now Archie... the other people seem at random, but getting 3 of the 4 of us seems too calculated._ **

**_who could possibly have a vendetta against you, little miss sunshine,_ **Jughead texts back in under a minute. 

_Ouch,_ Betty thinks. 

There isn’t time to formulate a response to the comment, let alone the insult, before: **_Sorry, that was dickish to say. Worth looking into, but even with our friendships as the common denominator, it would be different motives against each of us, right?_ **

**_I suppose,_** she sends back. 

**_Archie just showed up, I gotta see what’s going on. Your pick tonight, right?_ **

It is her pick, and when he calls her later, they start Good Will Hunting with very little fanfare.

And even then, they barely watch the movie. Jughead sounds ...off as they start and she has to ask, “Jug? Is something wrong?” 

“Have I fucked up? Am I a terrible person for dragging my friends into this? You were right, I’m the reason they started this.” His voice is raw and it hurts Betty to hear him so upset. 

“Jug, no,” she insists. “There’s no way that this all started on a whim, they had information stockpiled and had to have been doing that for ages in order to turn around yours so quickly. You might have been the match to light it, but the gunpowder was already laid.” 

“Betty your metaphor isn’t making me feel that much better. That implies we’re all a powder keg about to explode.” 

“Did you just quote Hamilton lyrics at me, Juggie?”

He pauses. “In my defense, Archie has been trying to learn the rap in Guns and Ships and now the whole recording is stuck in my head.” 

“Likely story,” she teases. “But, really, please don’t think this is your fault, Jughead. We aren’t defined by what happens to us. And...” She chooses her words carefully, thinking about what she would want to hear, what would have helped when Polly used her as an emotional crutch before bailing altogether, or now, on the days when her mother’s vice grip on every aspect of Betty’s life tightens. “We aren’t our parents, either.” 

He takes his time to clear his throat, and if Betty didn’t know better, she might think he was choked up. “Thanks, Betts.”

The movie plays on in the background and Betty listens to the dialogue alongside Jughead’s breathing as it evens out. “Did something happen last week?” she asks, suddenly putting his comment and actions from the past few days into context. “Is that why you’re thinking this?” 

“Yes,” he admits, voice dropping. “I had a ‘special side quest.’” Betty hears the derision in his voice. “Archie helped me take care of it and now he has to deal with the consequences, instead of me.” 

She is a little scared to ask but—“What was the side quest?” 

“Getting rid of something illegal enough that we had to...” he gives a pained sigh, “We had to go to my dad. So it’s great to know among all his other sketchy shit, we can add drug dealing to the list.” 

Betty gulps and feels the instinct to hug him, wishing he were here watching the movie with her so she could test the waters. Then, of course, her brain skitters away to other things they might do if Jughead were sitting in her bed and she scrambles to get it out of the gutter. “None of that is your fault.” 

“It certainly feels like it is.” 

She can’t hug him then, but Betty does act on it in the morning, when she sneaks out the side door before Alice sees her to catch Jughead before he drives off on the bike. (Is she acting on this because of certain, salacious dreams from just before her alarm went off? Maybe). 

“Jug,” she calls out, over the idling engine. He looks up and the unrestrained grin at seeing her sets butterflies alight deep in her belly. _Do it_ , she urges herself. So she does. Jughead seems startled at first but then relaxes into the embrace. 

“What was that for,” he asks, voice strangled and ears red when they pull apart. Betty gnaws on her lip and avoids his eye. 

“You seemed like you needed it last night and it’s not like I could climb in your window to give you a hug, so... Belated.” 

Jughead gulps, blinking rapidly at her mention of climbing through windows. “Thanks,” he manages. “Do you want a ride?” 

“Oh!” now it’s her turn to startle. “Um, I’m in a skirt.” Jughead scans her legs, apparently very aware and very appreciative of that fact if the lingering gaze is any indication. 

“Right,” he says reluctantly. “If you do want to, I don’t mind waiting while you change.” 

She gulps, mind on many things: firstly, her mother catching wind of Betty’s manner of getting to school, secondly the temptation to have her mostly-bare legs wrapped around Jughead, and finally, the bob of his throat when he suggests the idea of her changing—or, rather, removing her skirt, she thinks. Her voice is barely above a whisper when she says okay with a nod. “Hang on,” she tells him. 

It takes her longer to pick new clothes than she would have liked, but swapping the shorter skirt for jeans and boots makes her conservative sweater seem even more childish. Betty loved how confident she felt in the clothes Veronica picked out for her the other day, relishing in the way she was able to push her boundaries and test out this newer version of herself—the Betty whose heart might show on her sleeve more, but who also seeks justice no matter the cost. The Betty who is a big fan of both the boy and the motorcycle he sits on outside, who picks out a low-cut scooped sweater because she wants Jughead to look at her with fire in his eyes like he had yesterday while she ate her apple. 

The Betty who woke up in the middle of the night so unbearably turned on after a dream involving Jughead’s hand up her shirt while she leaned against his bike that she slipped her hand underneath the band of her pajama shorts and imagined it was his. 

She doesn’t realize until she’s all the way back down and facing Jughead again that she just changed with her curtains open, which is in plain view from where Jughead is parked. The flames climbing up his cheeks tell her that he realized it, too. Betty musters up every bit of confidence she can find and swings her leg over the seat and presses up close to Jughead’s back. 

For safety. 

And not at all because her boldness and general mind-in-the-gutter-ness has her wanting to slide her palms up under his shirt, not just beneath his unzipped jacket. 

Alongside the hum of the motor, Betty’s heart beats double time and it feels like Jughead’s just might be too. 

Archie and Veronica join them in the Blue & Gold, Veronica carrying a Pop’s bag of pastries that Jughead reaches and is subsequently smacked away from. “Archie gets first pick, you heathen, calm down.” Chastened, he waits until Archie extracts a glazed doughnut but merely looks at it in his hand instead of eating. 

And then, as though the day is set to keep Betty’s mind in the gutter, Jughead selects a jelly doughnut and she has to stare determinedly at her shoes. This is not the time to fixate on Jughead’s lips. Or tongue. Or where they might feel best on her skin. 

_God._

“What’s the plan, Arch,” Jughead asks through a mouthful of doughnut. Veronica looks mildly disgusted and Betty refuses to look up. 

Archie sighs. “Truth. If the whole, uh, _locker fiasco_ gets out, then I at least have an explanation and maybe we can dig our way out of it. But if I get a quest that makes me do something illegal on my own, I have to own that.” He takes a bite of his own doughnut and mumbles, “This fucking sucks.” 

They all nod, but nobody says anything; there is no way to placate this reality. So instead they gather around Archie as he taps open the Sweetwater Secrets app and submits ‘truth’ alongside his name. 

There’s a collective inhale and then it feels like they’re all holding their breath the entire day. 

Nothing pops up from the app during first period or break; at lunch, the four of them stare down the clock until Archie’s 24-hour mark, but still nothing; the app is silent until the end of the day until Betty and Jughead’s phones vibrate simultaneously after the final bell while they sit in their own silence in the paper office. 

Betty’s stomach fills with dread and tells Jughead to look because she can’t do it. 

He makes a noise of confusion. 

“It’s not Archie,” he tells her. “It’s just a new call out. Chuck Clayton.” 

Betty does a double take. “Really? What on _earth?”_

Their phones buzz again, but it’s the group text and Veronica has sent a string of question marks, followed by a shrug emoji from Archie. 

“That’s—that’s unexpected,” Jughead says. 

Betty _hmm_ s before she gets up to pace in front of the whiteboard-turned-investigative-board. “Maybe not,” she muses, drumming her fingers along the border. “Maybe they _expected_ Archie to pick the quest to avoid getting in trouble for the—” nobody is around but she still lowers her voice “—drug handoff.” 

“But if they’re so hellbent on fucking us over, why waste that opportunity?” 

“Think about it,” Betty says. She walks around the board and desk, leaning against its front to face Jughead where he sits atop another desk. (Does he _ever_ sit normally, she wonders.) “If they reveal a huge drug exchange, there is no way to keep that quiet. The school board and sheriff’s department would have to be involved. Questions would be asked and like Archie said—there’s kind of an explanation for what happened. But then the police would have to dig around to find out who has access to that kind of supply.” 

Jughead cuts in, “Digging that would lead straight to my dad.” 

“Not necessarily,” Betty counters. Her brain spins and she tries to capture the right words, talking with her hands as if she could pull them from thin air. “It still needed to be _sold_ to someone. The sheriff would track down the middleman first. And the middleman is whoever is behind Sweetwater. So what if they were just playing chicken? Like you did at the start? What if they didn’t want to risk getting caught by using this?” 

Jughead raises his eyebrows, then swipes his finger across the bridge of his nose—Betty has to swoon a little at the noir homage. “And if they’re that worried by this one thing fucking them over… maybe it’s easier to trace than we originally thought.” 

She nods. “Bingo.” 

When Betty wakes up on Wednesday morning, it’s to a notification that Chuck has chosen quest. She doesn’t have to wonder too long what the quest is because as she opens her locker at school swaps out textbooks for her morning classes, loud whistles and taunts echo through the hallway and she turns just in time to see Chuck Clayton’s bare ass run past her. 

Laughter bubbles up; she _knew_ a quest would involve streaking at one point. Betty has her forehead resting on her open locker door, still giggling uncontrollably, when Jughead and Archie approach her, both looking uncomfortable. 

“My eyes,” Archie groans. 

Jughead moves close to Betty to peer into her locker and her breath catches from the heat of him so close. “Do you have any bleach in here, Betts, I need to pour it over my brain.” 

From the other end of the hallways, Veronica sidles up. “Ah, you two had to deal with the front end of that spectacle didn’t you.” 

“We wear towels in the locker rooms for a reason, Ronnie. I did not need to know a goddamn thing about how Clayton manscapes his balls.” 

Jughead gags but Betty and Veronica dissolve into hysterics. Veronica elbows her in the side playfully, “At least his very muscled backside was nice to look at, right, B?” 

Both boys look their way sharply; Archie appears offended, Jughead curious. 

Betty coughs politely. “I plead the fifth.” Jughead glances at her and she breaks eye contact, going pink. She can appreciate the toned look that some of the athletes in their school have, even if it’s not for her, but she isn’t about to counter Veronica’s assumption by saying she prefers tall, long-limbed boys in flannel with pretty hair. 

“Whatever you say,” Veronica singsongs. 

Their conversation is cut short by Weatherbee’s voice on the loudspeaker, naturally calling Chuck to the office. The raucous laughter is infectious and everyone in the hallway peers around for Chuck, their group included. Betty still feels Jughead’s eyes on her, though, and summons the courage to look at him while Veronica is distracted. 

“He’s not my type,” she murmurs. “Just so you know.” 

Jughead looks startled by the comment but it morphs into a mild smirk. “Not into asses carved out of marble?” 

Betty rests her head against the lockers, notebooks crossed over her chest to hide the flush she knows is blooming, but carries on. She feels _absurd_ but lets her eyes drag up and down Jughead’s body in a far more blatant way than she feels comfortable with—not while he _notices,_ anyway. This is the point, though. They’re finally on solid ground and maybe—just maybe—Betty can tip this in the direction she wants. 

The direction that, if the last few days were indicative of anything, Jughead wants too. 

“Nope,” she hums. When she meets his eyes again, Jughead’s face is a mixture of embarrassment and self-satisfaction. Should she ask him to _theorize_ during first period? This time with the express intent of it being a code for asking him to come into a dark corner? 

(Does she want her first kiss to be in _school?_ Not entirely. But Jughead kissing her in the Blue & Gold is a frequent scene in her dreams, so Betty is willing to sacrifice the location of her first kiss to indulge this particular fantasy.) 

They’ve drifted closer, now only as far apart as the opening of her locker. Everyone’s focus is still elsewhere, Betty could lift her chin ever so slightly and look back down to the bottom lip Jughead is now nervously chewing on. She could brush her hand to his face and pull that lip free of its abuse, move forward and let _herself_ bite it next, could really just—

The loudspeaker crackles again. “Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones to the office.” 

They break apart and eyes swing their way. Veronica asks, “What now?” 

“No clue,” Betty says, bewildered. 

Jughead’s expression is sour now. “Nothing good, that’s what.” 

His assumption is spot on, Betty spying Donna leaving the front office from down the hall and looking smug. “God damn her,” she seethes. 

Jughead follows her line of sight and swears in kind. 

The front office assistant is on the phone but uses her pen to point them to the chairs, lips pursed and clearly over dealing with teenagers for the day. 

_Me too,_ Betty thinks. 

They aren’t along for long. The main door opens a moment later to reveal a sheepish Chuck Clayton, now dressed in what appears to be Bulldogs practice clothes. 

“Fun morning?” Jughead asks of him, with sarcasm laid on thick. 

Chuck glares at him. “Fuck off, Jones,” he mumbles. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.” 

Betty, trying not to look at him for her own secondhand embarrassment, whips her head up. “What do you mean?” 

“The entire _point,”_ Jughead enunciates, “is that you literally have to choose.” 

Chuck shakes his head. “It might have looked like I did, but I got a DM from the app right after the push notification saying if I didn’t choose quest, they would fuck with the next round of drug tests for the team.” 

Betty’s mouth drops, trying to process. 

Jughead seems to catch up faster. “Do you have the messages? Did you take screenshots?” 

Chuck nods. “Yeah, I wasn’t about to take those fuckers on their word and assume they wouldn’t mess with the tests anyway. Plus, I figured I needed proof for whatever the hell Weatherbee’s got in store for me.” He jerks his head in the direction of Weatherbee’s closed door, which opens as if on cue.

“Email them to us,” Jughead hisses quietly. Chuck nods, obviously confused. 

“Mr. Jones and Miss Cooper, in here now.” Based on the tone of his voice, Weatherbee is in no mood for this. 

With a last glance over her shoulder at Chuck, Betty sees him mouth _good luck,_ with a look of surprise. _You, too,_ she sends back, before edging in closer to Jughead as Weatherbee snaps the door closed behind her.

“Miss Cooper.” Weatherbee levels her with a sharp look. 

“Yes, Principal Weatherbee?” She projects an air of innocence into her voice which is not _wrong,_ per se, seeing as she has no clue what she is in this office for. She has her suspicions, but still. 

“Am I to believe that you are slacking on your newspaper duties and deliberately keeping staff members from pieces due to personal grudges?” 

_Huh?_

“Well, sir,” Betty starts. “I will admit that I was late getting assignments out to the staff this week, but I would hardly call that slacking. That was a one-time accident.” 

Weatherbee pointedly looks between Betty and Jughead. “Do not make it a habit, Miss Cooper.” 

Jughead catches the very obvious drift and scoffs. 

“Do you have something to add, Mr. Jones? You are here for a reason as well, including those same allegations, especially that you are discriminating against certain members of the paper staff.” 

The irritation radiates off him and Betty grabs hold of Jughead’s wrist, a warning to not lose his temper. A plea, really, to let her deal with this. 

“Mr. Weatherbee, are you insinuating something about Jughead’s work ethic? You know as well as I do that Jughead is among the top in our class and was a runner-up in the Tri-State Student Journalism Contest last year and is nothing short of an excellent editor for the Blue & Gold.” 

Weatherbee doesn’t look impressed, but out of the corner of her eye, Betty can see a look of soft surprise at her vehement defense. 

“That may be, Miss Cooper, but links to criminal activity are not to be overlooked. If Mr. Jones is a poor influence, then perhaps he should be relieved of his editorial duties for the school paper.” 

_Links,_ Betty realizes, is Weatherbee’s barely-polite way to say that Jughead is firmly under the shadow of something his father has done. If he knows that information, there is no way he doesn’t know about the other stunts Sweetwater has pulled. She seethes, pressing her hands into fists. Her nails curl into her left palm, and, forgetting she still holds Jughead’s arm, he flinches under her right hand’s grasp. 

“Mr. Weatherbee, if you’re implying that Jughead is linked to _criminal activity_ because of rumors about his dad, that means you know about the gossip app that leveled those accusations. So you would also know how this app has been targeting students, forcing them to do dangerous things, even partaking in revenge porn, featuring underage students, and that’s an awfully serious thing for a school administration to have turned a blind eye to.” 

Her heart is in her throat, fists still clenched. How _long ago_ could this have been stopped? That they were allowed to run unchecked for this long is how the people behind Sweetwater Secrets could escalate in such an aggressive manner. 

Weatherbee stands. “Is that a threat, Miss Cooper?” 

“Merely an observation, Principal Weatherbee,” Betty says, saccharine sweet. “But given that my sister was a target and dropped out of school altogether to deal with this and that was nearly eight months ago, I think my parents would be more than upset to know you haven’t dealt with things properly. You are aware that my journalistic prowess comes from my parents running the local paper, right? I’m sure a lot of the school board members are regular readers of the Riverdale Register.” 

The pair of them are dismissed and Betty laughs out loud in shock when they’re back in the empty hallway. “I cannot believe that worked,” she admitted. 

“Betty,” Jughead says, awed. “That was fucking badass.” 

Her pulse finally stops roaring in her ears. “Was it?” Betty looks at him curiously. 

Jughead nods. “Let’s get you to class, Lois Lane.” He bumps her slightly with his elbow, teasing, and she has to duck her head to hide her embarrassed pride. 

By the time she makes it to AP Lit on Thursday, Betty is running fumes. The whole day prior was a game of catch up with the paper, finishing a physics lab report, writing the short paper on _Beloved_ , and trying to keep her mother off her back. 

She succeeded in all but the management of Alice, which Betty supposes is enough of a win. 

As is the smile Jughead sends her way as the class passes in their papers to the front of the room—landing, of course, in Bret’s hands to deliver to Mr. Jenkins because he and Donna commandeered her usual seat again. The collective eyeballing from the class has Jenkins counting the stack of papers and Betty sighs in relief to have this final homework hurdle cleared. 

It also doesn’t hurt that Jughead’s chair is close enough to Betty’s at their shared table that they keep knocking knees. 

Her thighs prickle with goosebumps that have nothing to do with the cool air in the classroom. She and Jughead seem to have made an unspoken agreement about their ... _undefined_ thing. They’re not ignoring it any longer, but they aren’t addressing it just yet. Veronica prodded her this morning to do precisely that, after seeing that Jughead now keeps his things in Betty’s locker, but Betty waved her off. 

Even now, as they leave class, Veronica tugs on the curled end of her ponytail. “DTR,” she whispers. “Or I’ll start in on him, too.” 

Betty knows she wouldn’t dare, but the glint in Veronica’s eye has her second-guessing. She is especially grateful that Veronica waits with Archie while he buys lunch today and hasn’t caught up to them in the Blue & Gold office to see Jughead place his hand on Betty’s lower back to guide her through the door first. 

The touch is so light it’s barely there, but it still sends a shiver up her spine. 

Betty tamps down the urge to grab his hand when it falls away, busying herself with the cling-wrap around her sandwich after sitting down; she does not, though, miss the way his eyes trail her thighs when she crosses her legs in the chair. 

When he sees her watching him, Jughead looks sheepish, and Betty so desperately wants to uncross her legs, stand up, and plant herself in his lap. There’s no way he can read her mind, but something in his expression tells Betty that he might know the direction in which her mind is going—directly into the gutter. 

The door swings open to reveal Archie and Veronica, who smiles like a canary-swallowing cat. “You could cut the sexual tension in here with a knife, Archiekins, don’t you think?” she chirps. 

Betty wants to melt into the floor. Jughead is now busy with his own sandwich wrapper. Archie looks conflicted, unsure if he should acquiesce to his girlfriend or save his best friends from mortification. 

“Um—” 

Betty pulls herself together and clears her throat. “Veronica, your hand is literally in Archie’s back pocket right now. Those who live in glass houses,” she says pointedly. 

Veronica shrugs. And then, judging by the way Archie jumps slightly, grabs his ass. 

The next notification hits right after the lunch bell rings, when the halls are at max capacity and ringers turned back on. It’s a chorus of chirps, chimes, duck quacks—Betty has to wonder who the hell actually uses that tone—trills, and beeps. 

Jughead leans against the locker next to hers while she tosses notebooks into her bag, then freezes. “Hang on,” he groans, fishing for his phone. Betty gnaws on her lip while he taps and scrolls until—“Whoa.” His eyebrows disappear until that one unruly curl that she always wants to tuck back into his beanie. “Get a load of this,

“ **For the OG nerds themselves, Princess Etheline, Dilton the Gamemaster, and Hellcaster Ben: roll the dice and select your path, truth or quest?** ” 

“ _Etheline?”_ Betty makes a face. 

Jughead’s eyes widen and Betty balks, expecting Ethel to be right behind her. She’s not, but she is in sight down the hallway, a deer in headlights. 

She feels awful in an instant; it isn’t her place to mock something Ethel clearly enjoys, not when she is now on the receiving end of a vicious gossip attack. Betty has been there, she knows how much this shock hurts. “Come on,” Betty murmurs, grabbing hold of Jughead by the wrist. “Let’s go talk to her.” 

He nods and follows, and doesn’t even flinch or turn red at her hand on his. What he does do is rub his thumb in a soft circle on the inside of her wrist, a reassuring gesture that has _her_ turning a bit red. Jughead smiles, bashful, and fidgets with the hem of his beanie before releasing her and motioning in the direction of Ethel. 

Betty ushers Ethel into the Blue & Gold office, shutting the door behind them. 

“Ethel, do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently. 

When she turns around, Ethel looks less upset than Betty would have imagined. Instead she looks— _pleased?_

Ethel giggles awkwardly. “I’m pretty sure I know what truth they have on me.” 

Betty has to admit, she’s curious. Ethel is quiet and sweet and—based on the callout—on the nerdy side. What could she be hiding that Sweetwater Secrets caught wind of? Ethel’s eyes flick to Jughead for a moment before answering, “It’s why there’s more than one of us in the challenge. Ben and Dilton… I’m—” she giggles in a way that makes Betty cringe “—I’m dating both of them right now.” 

Betty blinks. That wasn’t at all what she expected, not that she knew what to expect anyway. Behind her, Jughead exhales a huff that Betty knows is him trying not to laugh in surprise. 

_“Dating,_ dating,” Ethel clarifies, looking at Jughead again. 

_Bless him_ , Betty thinks, realizing he is still confused. “Jug,” she whispers. She turns, trying to say it as discreetly as possible. “She’s hooking up with both of them.” 

Jughead looks distinctly uncomfortable. 

When they both face her again, Ethel seems smug and gives Jughead an appraising look that ignites a possessive flare in Betty’s belly. She wants to grab hold of his hand again and wishes she _had_ listened to Veronica’s insistence earlier today. 

“I’m going to choose truth,” Ethel informs them. “Thanks for checking on me, though, Betty!” She practically skips out, but not before tossing out a too-flirtatious-for-Betty’s-liking “Bye, Jughead!” 

Betty leans against the wall. “Well that was unexpected.” 

Jughead makes a face. “I… feel like I need a shower at that look she just gave me.” 

Both _shower_ and _Jughead_ in the same thought has Betty even more unsettled, but now in a very different way. The way that he grins at her before opening the door tells Betty that he knows _exactly_ what she is thinking this time. 

At the end of the day, Jughead waits for Betty at her, now _their,_ locker and her stomach flip-flops. 

The stubborn curl is free as he turns his beanie over in his hands, which she thinks means... 

“Want a ride home?”

…he has the motorcycle. 

_Hell yes,_ her brain screams. “Okay,” a little shaky, is what comes out. 

If the air between them the past few days has been charged, today’s ride home is practically electric. Betty clings to his back and when they idle at stop signs, Jughead rests one hand on her knee where it’s nestled behind his. She isn’t quite sure whether she wants him to tear off her clothes or hold her hand, or both. 

_Both,_ she thinks.

When they get to Elm Street and Jughead shifts into park, Betty herself isn’t sure whether she wants to tear off his clothes or hold his hand. 

It’s both, again, but she settles for holding him tighter in a hug before reluctantly climbing off the bike. They each seem to eyeball each other when pulling off their respective helmets and fussing with their hair, which sets Betty into giggles. Even Jughead laughs to himself a little as he replaces his beanie on his head. When she hands him back the helmet, she very nearly indulges herself in tucking that one lock of hair under the knit brim, just so she can touch him again. 

In his jacket pocket, his phone dings. 

“My _god,”_ Betty groans. “I swear when this whole thing is over, I am throwing my phone into the river and going off grid.” 

“Don’t worry,” Jughead placates. “Just Dilton. I saw him earlier and he seemed kind of squirrely, I wonder if Ethel told him what’s up. He’s asking about help on a campaign quest, though, so not Sweetwater related. Not sure why he wants me when he’s the damn Gamemaster.” 

Betty raises her eyebrows, teasing. “I did mean to ask earlier. Are there allowed to be two hellcasters? I thought that was _your_ role.” 

The flush on his cheeks is adorable, but he narrows his eyes like he knows she’s trying to rile him up. 

His voice drops a little when he answers, though, and Betty feels her own face aflame. “Do I need to tutor you in the ways of Gryphons & Gargoyles? It _would_ be beneficial. For the investigation.” Jughead steps closer, close enough for Betty to touch that curl, close enough for him to lean down—

“Elizabeth!” 

Alice’s voice is razor sharp, causing Betty and Jughead to jump apart. The look of fury on her mother’s face has Betty kowtowing without needing to be told, and she hates herself for how immediately she always, _always_ bends to her will. She crosses the side lawn in large strides, hoping to at least be through the front door before the yelling starts. 

Betty sees a sliver of Jughead’s concerned expression through the door before it slams shut. 

“What the _hell_ do you think you are doing, Elizabeth. I told you to stay away from that boy. He is trouble and don’t you even attempt to tell me otherwise,” Alice cuts her off before Betty can even make a sound. “Waldo Weatherbee gave me a call today. I know all about your issues with the paper and apparently you’ve skipped _classes_ now and I will not have you fall pregnant by the no-good son of a no-good father, so help me god.” 

There’s no point in attempting to get a word in edgewise, let alone defend herself, so Betty lets her mother rage on and belittle her grades and accomplishments, tell Betty she’s sending her to an early grave, tell her she’s grounded for life and that there is no more cell phone, no more laptop, no more _anything,_ until Alice runs out of steam. 

“Are you done, now?” Betty asks in a dull voice. 

Alice seems to think on it, then nods. 

“Am I ever going to be anything more to you than a walking report card?” Betty tries to keep it together, but the tears spill over as soon as she starts speaking. “Do you care at all if I have interests outside of homework, or have friends, or be remotely prepared for the real world, or _god forbid_ go on a date before I’m 40? Do you even _see_ me? I’m not Polly and I’m not _you_ and I am not the perfect little China doll with the pink dresses and straight-A’s who eats all her vegetables and has a size-2 waist. 

“I’m a fucking _person,_ Mom,” she says, voice cracking. 

Betty moves to dash up the stairs, so there’s not one more moment of her mother seeing her cry like this, but Alice stops her. 

For a fleeting second, she thinks her mother might apologize. But she merely holds out her hand. “Cell phone,” she demands. 

Betty slaps it into her palm and stomps up the stairs. 

This is the first time in her life she has ever slammed her door shut—that was Polly’s forte—but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should. 

Betty isn’t sure how long she has been flat out across her bed, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars she and Polly stuck up in secret when they were in grade school; their parents never let them decorate in fun ways like their friends, everything had to be properly framed and had to merit nailing a hole in the wall, but Polly won the stars in a gift exchange and they split the package between their rooms. Hal had raged about chipping the paint but Alice, in one of her rare moments, convinced him to leave them up. 

They have long since lost their glow, but they still make Betty smile. She hopes that whatever Polly’s dorm looks like in California, she might have pressed on some stars above her bed frame. 

Something sharp sounding catches her attention. She sits up, bewildered, and tries to locate its source. 

It’s Jughead, knocking against the window pane. 

“What on earth—” Betty rushes over to lift the window and sees that Jughead is carefully balanced on Mr. Andrews’s ladder, the same one that she used to sneak out when she helped Veronica with her quest. Dual purpose, she supposes. “Juggie,” she whispers. “What are you doing?” 

“I had to make sure you weren’t going to go full yellow wallpaper on me while locked up in here. Your phone kept going to voicemail so I assumed your mom took it.” 

Betty’s heart flutters knowing that Jughead called multiple times to check on her. 

Jughead braces himself on the window seat and clambers inside; it is awkward and bumbling and he looks like he _knows_ how it looked, but it only makes Betty appreciate him that much more. Once he is standing up to full height in front of her, she leans into his chest and feels him startle before wrapping his arms around her. 

“You okay?” he asks. He is so close that his breath breezes across her earlobes and Betty shivers. Jughead holds her tighter at the reaction. 

Betty mumbles her answer into the soft fabric of her shirt, “I guess so.” 

Jughead releases her and pulls back to look her in the eye. “C’mon, Betts, I know you better than that.” 

His gaze is intent and Betty sees the trust in it, hopes that he can see the same in her own. “My mother is so—” she breaks off to find the words, groaning, “—I don’t _know,_ Jughead, she makes me feel like I’ve done everything wrong and even though I know that isn’t true, the way she says these things, I start to doubt myself and then I… My mom is crazy, Jughead, but she makes me feel like I am, too. And what if I _am_?” 

Betty has to take in deep breaths to steady herself, and Jughead’s grip on her shoulders helps keep her head from spinning.

“Betty, what did you tell me last week?” he insists, voice so gentle it almost has her in tears again. “We aren’t our parents.” 

She lets out a watery laugh. “I can’t believe Jughead Jones, my opposing editor, just quoted _me_ back to myself.” 

Jughead smiles, teasing. “You do say some worthwhile things, Betty, even I have to admit.” Betty finally feels the frustration and tension draining from her, in time with the slow brush of Jughead’s thumb against the side of her neck. “Also...” He pauses, seemingly unsure. 

She tilts her head, expecting another jab about their journalistic rivalries. “What?” 

He swallows, exhales. 

“Jug, what?” 

And then his hands slide up to cradle her cheeks and he rushes forward to press his lips firmly against hers. Her gasp of surprise goes unheard, either because of the blood rushing in her ears or because it disappears into Jughead’s _mouth._ His mouth because he is _kissing her,_ and his lips are slightly chapped but they’re moving against hers because she is _kissing him back_ and she thinks that she has never felt so completely at ease in her whole life and—

“The quest!” she blurts out, breaking away from him in shock. 

Jughead rolls his eyes but laughs, almost in delight. “Really, that’s what you’re thinking about in the middle of our moment?” 

Their _moment_ , she realizes, is something that she doesn’t want to end. Betty rocks onto her tiptoes and kisses him, relishing in the way his mouth immediately moves in time with hers and he smooths his hands down her back until he can pull her closer by the waist and she has to brace herself with her palms flat against his chest to keep balanced. She thinks she could keep doing this forever, stay in this bubble of soft kisses and his mouth opening slightly to deepen the kiss and the squeeze of his hands on her waist, but then she has to bring her hands up to his jaw, slowing them down. 

Jughead makes a noise of reluctance before they separate again. “To be continued, Jug, I promise,” she says. “But the _quest,_ your text from Dilton. Maybe the callout wasn’t all or nothing. What if the quest is designed to be a three-person task and since only Ethel picked truth, Dilton and Ben went through with it anyway? And that’s why he asked for your help?”

“I mean, I guess, but what kind of quest would physically need three people?” 

Betty is exasperated. “Jug, I don’t know, you’re the actual G&G player.” 

Jughead frowns and if she didn’t know any better, she’d think he might stick his tongue out at her. “There’s a certain level where the idea is that players are able to ascend and go to another realm. It’s not possible unless there’s an alliance of ...fuck, of three or more players.” 

“What’s that task?” Betty asks, urgently. 

He seems to struggle with layman’s terms. “Do you remember in the first Harry Potter book where it’s, like, a riddle to determine what’s poison and what’s not?” Betty nods. “It’s that, basically.” 

“You don’t think... you don’t think Sweetwater would actually go through with poisoning someone, do you?” 

Jughead’s eyes are frantic, nervous energy coursing through him. “I mean, Bret’s leg is fucking broken from god knows what. They left a brick of coke in my locker. Maybe they just don’t care what happens anymore.”

He pulls his phone out to dial the Sheriff’s emergency line and they both hold their breath while the line rings. “Where do you think he would go, Jug,” Betty whispers, as though staying quiet will make them pick up faster. 

“I have an idea, I think.” 

_“Riverdale Sheriff’s Department, what’s your emergency?”_

“I think my friend might be about to do something dangerous, I’m pretty sure he’s in one of the Fox Forest clearings, down where there are empty caves.” The phone shakes in Jughead’s hand and Betty grips his other one to keep him calm. 

_“Okay, what’s your name, what’s your friend’s name?”_

“This is Jughead Jones, my friend is Dilton Doiley and he’s with Ben Button, I’m pretty sure.” 

The line is silent before there’s a cluck of annoyance. _“This line isn’t for prank calls, kid. Find something else to do with your time.”_

Before the telltale pause of someone hanging up, Betty rushes to speak. “No, wait, please. This is Betty Cooper and it isn’t a prank. Please send someone out to Fox Forest. And,” she grits her teeth, channeling the confidence she has mustered for the last few days. “And if you do, I won’t tell my mother that the department was going to deny a concerned call from a teenager who thinks his friend is in danger. That report in the Register wouldn’t reflect well on Sheriff Minetta.” 

There’s a sigh. _“Fine, we’ll send a patrol to the clearings.”_ The line goes dead. 

Jughead squeezes her hand. “Okay _now_ I can tell you that you blackmailing people is really fucking hot.” 

Betty flushes then swoops up to stamp a brief but hard kiss to his lips. 

“Ready for a jailbreak, Cooper?” Though there is an underlying current of anxiety, Jughead throws her an unfairly charming smile. 

Time might be of the essence but she doubts that an extra few moments will make a difference, not with the Sheriff sending a deputy out.

“One more thing first,” she says, not even recognizing the seductive tone coming out of her mouth. Like she has wanted to all damn day, Betty leans up and tucks Jughead’s hair underneath the hem of his hat. 

The wind at her back is less exhilarating for this motorcycle ride; despite their (several) kisses, Betty can’t relish in the closeness of being pressed so tightly to Jughead because she can feel the anxiety coursing through him the closer they drive to the main Fox Forest trail entrance. 

He sees it before she does, because half a second before the strobing blue and red lights enter her field of vision, Jughead goes stock still. 

The clearing is a mess of hazard lights, the red throwing a weird glow that turns the trees into monstrous shadows. There are three Sheriff department cars, one fire truck, one ambulance, and two stretchers in the pool of light within the barricades. 

Jughead pushes them forward as close as they can without one of the deputies seeing them. 

It’s close enough, though. 

On one stretcher, Ben is hooked up to an IV with an EMT compressing a manual ventilator over his face to a steady rhythm; the other one carries a body, covered by a sheet. 

Behind them, the coroner’s van pulls up. 

.

.

.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> endless thanks to my cheerleading crew, especially to those who have had my back and encouraged me even more in the recent weeks. 
> 
> I know this is a MASSIVE update, but it would really mean the world if you left comments and tell me what you thought! (....nicely, please? I am open to concrit, but please don't abuse the guest comment option). I am thriving on all your comments so far, and will get around to responding asap!


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